If the "what color is this dress" mystery has you tearing out your hair, here's an easy yet scientifically accurate explanation. In the photo link are three photos. I have taken the dress out of context and placed it over a black and grey background. there are 3 versions of this format, all over the same backgrounds -
Dress as presented in the popular web photo, no color adjustments.
Dress with the BLUES only boosted by 75%
Dress with blues DECREASED by 75%
You can easily click back and forth between these three versions in the album. THE SMALL SQUARES - these small squares represent the exact color of the dress, as sampled in photoshop, at random places at approximately the height level of the box. I'll explain the bottom, slightly out of line box in just a moment!
For most people, in the "colors not adjusted" photo, the dress over the black or grey background may look decidedly less "blue and black", and more white and gold, once the context has been removed (the bright sunshine in the background. However, I don't think "context" or higher brain function is the reason for the controversy, as some have suggested
In the "Blue boosted" photo, most people will say that the dress is distinctly blue. If not...look up some color blindness tests online, stat!
In the "Blue decreased" photo, most people will say the dress is white and gold or tan. Again, pretty easy.
Its where the dress lies in the middle - the original photo - where the discrepancies in our ability to interpret subtle color perception begin to take on a higher degree of variation.
In regards to the original photo - the truth of the color (don't get mad!)
If I sample in photoshop the box colors taken from the dress, i can get a readout of the amount of the three main colors when dealing with light being emitted from the photo, Red, Green, and Blue.
Without boring you with numbers...
in the top box, the combination of levels of RGB put the box squarely in the "Tan/gold" spectrum - nowhere close to black.
In the second box, the levels/numbers become more subtle. Blue slightly edges out the red and the green. If the RGB numbers where exactly equal, we would simply see greyscale - either white if the numbers where all maxed, or black if they were all at zero, nad varying shades of grey in between. A slight elevation of the BLUE in this instance indicates that the color has indeed blue overtones. HOWEVER - the numbers would indicate that most would call it "off white" or extremely pale baby blue - the blue number is only very slightly elevated
I did the same for each box in the "original photo" montage, and the numbers matched up with my own perceptions - slightly more blue in the lower boxes, slightly darker tan in the trim that is more shadowed. No black anywhere :)
Now for the interesting sideline - the bottom box in the original photo is actually a sample taken from another photo, one iI took. It is a sample from a piece of white writing paper, high quality, 97 brightness 20lb stock. The photo was taken in good lighting in an ecrue painted room, with one window open and blue skies outside.
NOTE - Even though the paper is undeniably very white in real life, when the color from the photo of it is sampled it does NOT register as even RGB numbers, as true white should, but as a subtle shade. The numbers for the WHITE paper were -
Red = 176
Green = 187
Blue = 217
So...even the WHITE paper has a subtle blue tint to it, in regular light (according to the analytics in photoshop).
For fun, I took a tiny square of the "White/Blue" square sample taken from the upper portion of the dress, and dropped it in the middle of the "White" sample from the paper. If you look closely, you can see it there in the middle. Which looks "more blue" - the "White" paper or the "blue" dress?????
MY HYPOTHESIS - I could have done the above photoshop analysis with black and white goggles on - the numbers for RGB wouldn't lie. The sample of the white writing paper is actually bluer than the sample of the "Blue" dress taken from the top.
So, why do 25% of the population see blue and 75% see white?? I'm leaving off "black" for now, because there is actually nothing close to actual black in the photo. Here's a logical breakdown of possibilities, and finally, a conclusion.
*For those who see blue/black, they are either - *
Correct!
Have a red/green color deficiency in their sight, thus artificially elevating the blue levels.
Have a "blue sensitivity" that also causes the blue levels to be elevated, with the same outcome.
For the people that see, white/gold, they are either -
Correct!
Have a blue deficiency in their sight, causing the elevation of red/green, which additively combined can form tan/gold.
Have a red/green sensitivity, causing these numbers to be artificially elevated and again causing them to see gold.
SO WHICH IS MORE LIKELY CORRECT??
We know from generations of testing that approx. 10% of the population (mostly men) have a red/green deficiency. We also know that sensitivity to the blue spectrum is somewhat common, and that the human eye struggles with processing blue. This is the origin of "Blue Blocker" sunglasses, originally for hunters or driving, that limit the amount of blue light that is transmitted to the eye. By limiting the amount of Blue, the science is that we are able to see more clearly and accurately, and with a higher degree of contrast and detail.
Given these two known genetic truths, and in looking at the numbers above, I would have to say that the more "correct" description of the original photo of the dress is that it is WHITE WITH GOLD TRIM. The actual color of the dress, in different lighting and context, is irrelevant. As presented in the original photo and analyzed in photoshop -
The "white/blue" portion of the dress is whiter than a piece of white writing paper, which we would all say is "white".
The "gold/black" portion of the dress lies squarely in the middle of what the numbers in photoshop would describe as tan or gold.
There is no "black", or anything near it, in the photo at all. Those that see "black" I believe ARE deriving that from some sort of context, and not actually seeing black. Light and greyscale are pretty easy to delineate for everybody, and putting any of the "black/gold" boxes up next to true black (as in the background of the photo) would have almost unanimous vote of "something other than black" being the color represented.
So...it would seem that 75% of the population is getting it right - the color of the dress, as presented in the original photo, is more white/Gold than Blue/black.
Cheers!