this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
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[–] Zoldyck@lemmy.world 133 points 4 days ago (8 children)

I'm still convinced this is the biggest troll. It's clearly white and gold

[–] 474D@lemmy.world 82 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (12 children)

You can literally sample the rgb values and see it's blue and black

Edit: am I part of the joke here??? It's clearly blue and black...

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 82 points 4 days ago (4 children)

am I part of the joke here??? It's clearly blue and black...

The objective fact is…it is a blue and black dress. Other photos of the same dress show that.

But I cannot, for the life of me, see how anyone can possibly get that from this photo. Sample the RGB values all you want and it clearly is not black in this photo. The exposure and white balance have messed around with it so much it is incomprehensible to me how anyone can see it as blue and black.

[–] Rooskie91@discuss.online 44 points 4 days ago (4 children)

"The phenomenon revealed difference in human color perception..."

Yes, you're becoming a part of the joke. People LITERALLY see the dress differently. It doesn't matter what the objective facts are. TBH, it says a lot about humanity. Even when we have evidence that subjective experiences can vary, and even contradict each other, we still end up arguing over whose viewpoint is "correct".

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[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 26 points 4 days ago (10 children)

The lighting of the room is clearly yellow. The black stripes look to be a very glossy material, which when lit with yellow light reflects goldish. There's no way that lighting turns a white dress blue.

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[–] auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 3 days ago (11 children)
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[–] Nelots@lemmy.zip 69 points 4 days ago (18 children)

I've always really liked this explanation image you can find on Wikipedia page for it. Essentially, people who see white and gold are mistaking the lighting to be cold and blue-tinted, rather than warm and yellow-tinted.

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The portions inside the boxes are the exact same colors, you can easily check this with a color picker.

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[–] Opisek@lemmy.world 22 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Stop trolling me. It's blue and black. I could never figure how people might perceive it otherwise.

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[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 119 points 4 days ago (13 children)

Because no one has posted the other photos:

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And this is a photo of the same dress taken under proper lighting:

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[–] Hubi@feddit.org 60 points 4 days ago (14 children)

Not even the brighter version looks white and gold to me. It's so obviously blue and black, y'all are insane.

[–] volvoxvsmarla@lemm.ee 38 points 4 days ago

I understand doubting the white but seeing black in that gold was what I could never buy. To me it seemed like light blue-grey with matte gold.

[–] mr_satan@lemmy.zip 21 points 4 days ago

I'm the opposite, the OG photo reads white and gold no matter what edits I see. Even after seeing the dress in proper light the OG is still white and gold.

[–] CH3DD4R_G0BL1N@sh.itjust.works 20 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I’m with you. This viral moment never made sense to me cuz I can never see anything else even with my wildest imagination.

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[–] Hadriscus@jlai.lu 20 points 4 days ago

No way, really ? I really thought it was always white and gold. This cannot be the same dress, I do not trust my eyes anymore

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[–] mehdi_benadel@lemmy.balamb.fr 58 points 4 days ago (19 children)

For your information : the dress is really blue and black, according to the store and manufacturer. The vast majority of people see it as white and gold, but I personally think most people are not used to decrypting overexposed pictures, hence their inability to perceive the right colors.

[–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 38 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

not used to decrypting overexposed pictures

I used to see it black and blue, now I see it white and gold.

+ I do photography and often have to work with overexposed pictures

Edit: just looked at it again now its black and blue. Wtf brain

[–] expatriado@lemmy.world 24 points 4 days ago

overexposure is not the issue but improper white balance, the camera was probably set for ~6800K but the lighting in the room was ~2700K

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[–] FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 44 points 4 days ago (4 children)

I still don’t see either. It looks blue and gold to me

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[–] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 42 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (12 children)

It appears white/gold to me on it's own, I've never been able to see anything different.

Grabbing this specific image and sampling the colours though; they appear more of a grey/brown colour. I can sorta maybe understand blue, but definitely not black.

This is just using Polish photo editor on android:

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[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 35 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (35 children)

This is exactly the thing.

Whatever the dress may be in reality, the photo of it that was circulated was either exposed or twiddled with such that the pixels it's made of are indeed slightly bluish grey trending towards white (i.e. above 50% grey) and tanish browny gold.

That is absolutely not up for debate. Those are the color values of those pixels, end of discussion.

Edit to add: This entire debacle is a fascinating case of people either failing to or refusing to separate the concept of a physical object versus its very inaccurate representation. The photograph of the object is not the object: ce n'est pas une robe.

The people going around in this thread and elsewhere putting people down and calling them "stupid" or whatever else only because they know that the physical dress itself is black and blue based on external information are studiously ignoring the fact that this is not what the photograph of it shows. That's because the photograph is extremely cooked and is not an accurate depiction. The debate only exists at all if one party or the other does not have the complete set of information, and at this point in history now that this stupid meme has been driven into the ground quite thoroughly I should hope that all of us do.

It's true that our brains can and will interpret false color data based on either context or surrounding contrast, and it's possible that somebody deliberately messed with the original image to amplify this effect in the first place. But the fact remains that arguing about what the dress is versus how it's been inaccurately depicted is stupid, and anyone still trying that at this late stage is probably doing so in bad faith.

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[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 42 points 4 days ago (10 children)
[–] Maestro@fedia.io 24 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I like Brainstorm vs Green Needle even better. The're not even the same amount of syllables! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1okD66RmktA

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[–] exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 39 points 3 days ago (5 children)

I found this image to be a really good way to distill the issue down into the two different modes or perception:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress#/media/File:Wikipe-tan_wearing_The_Dress_reduced.svg

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[–] weariedfae@sh.itjust.works 25 points 4 days ago (3 children)

I've only ever seen it as blue and black. I can't force it the other way like I could with Laurel and Yani. Y'all seeing white and gold astound me.

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[–] proper@lemmy.world 24 points 4 days ago (2 children)

ffs now it looks blue and gold. am i dying?

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[–] groolthedemon@lemmy.world 23 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (6 children)

I never really understood the debate. In reality, if you were standing in front of the dress it is black and blue. Now, if you take a digital photo of the dress and post it on the internet as a terribly compressed jpg, with weird white balancing, and brightness/contrast turned up and down it is gold and white. The debate isn't really about the reality of the color of the dress but the reality of a badly edited photo.

[–] TheRealKuni@lemmy.world 19 points 4 days ago (4 children)

It’s more about the colors around it. This image from Wikipedia does a really good job illustrating the effect.

Context is extremely important in identifying color. As Technology Connections tells us, for example, “brown is just orange with context.”

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[–] kreskin@lemmy.world 22 points 3 days ago (9 children)

So people looking at this photograph actually can perceive this to be white and gold? thats utterly wild. And hard to believe.

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[–] drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world 22 points 3 days ago

I can never see black and blue. I assume all those who claim to see black and blue are bots. fite me

[–] Kinggold@feddit.org 22 points 4 days ago (4 children)

I remember seeing different colors on different screens, so I think part of the perception difference are the saturation and brightness settings of your screen

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[–] HuskerNation@lemmy.zip 20 points 3 days ago

I only see white gold

[–] goofystench@lemmy.world 20 points 3 days ago

whats next? are you gonna post who remembers yanny/laurel? bitch be fr

[–] enbiousenvy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

the first time ever I see this image, years ago, I could see both white-gold and black-blue. I don't know why I can only see white-gold now.

but assuming the bright light in the back is warm sun light, I think this is why my brain is more accepting that the blue tint is more of a shaded area from the sun, while the base color is white. the yellow-blue contrast

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[–] MTK@lemmy.world 18 points 4 days ago (4 children)

It kills me that no matter what, it is always white and gold for me, EVEN THOUGH REALITY SAYS OTHERWISE!

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[–] FelixCress@lemmy.world 18 points 4 days ago (7 children)

C'mon, it is clearly blue and black 😁

[–] davidgro@lemmy.world 19 points 4 days ago (3 children)

The actual dress was in fact blue and black.

[–] solsangraal@lemmy.zip 33 points 4 days ago (2 children)

those color illusions always wreck my brain

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[–] 474D@lemmy.world 17 points 4 days ago (4 children)

This literally clears up nothing for me and I'm about to lose it. It's still fucking blue and black

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