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Colour optical illusion
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
543 points (91.8% liked)
Mildly Interesting
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I guess it depends. Are people looking at the left image and going "Yep, that is definitely a dark black and navy blue"? Using a colour picker, the darker areas show up as somewhere around #7a6642, which definitely isn't the black #231e16 we see on the right. Same with the lighter spots: we're seeing something around #8596bb, which again isn't the navy blue of #3a45c3
Quite simply, I cannot make the dress in the left image look like the dress in the right, even if the dress in those images are supposed to be identical.
as a person who sees it as utterly obviously black and blue, i certainly don't literally see the same colours as the photo in normal lighting. What i see is precisely the colours you indicate (#7a6642 and #8596bb), but then my brain does white balancing and i interpret the materials as actually looking like this, which is i think quite clearly black and blue, if rather sun-bleached:
And the original image again for contrast:
According to the other comment replying to me, apparently some people see the picture and instinctively think "black and blue" because the background is bright. I can't see it and never will.
Which is why I tried asking other people who saw black and blue what black and blue they are seeing. The image on the right shows a deep black and navy blue, something I just do not see reflected in the left image.
The Salvation Army in South Africa did an advertisement (to raise awareness against violence against women) showing a yellow and gold dress and it's closer to what is shown in the image than what is shown in the original. Presumably, they wouldn't see that dress as black and blue.