the top one! 
reminds me of this illusion:
(square A and square B are the same color/shade. this is the same neurological mechanism responsible for the blue/black white/gold dressâŚ)
Itâs a trick question as thereâs a gradient on them. Although, due to compression artifacts on the gradient, the 2 halves are not identical. The left side gradient banding is shifted darker a little more than the right side.
Thanks, came here to say the same thing. I suppose you could take all the pixels of the two rectangles into two piles, assign them numeric values as to their density and then add them up.
Then you could claim either one in darker, probably, depending on total density, average density, RMS density, etcâŚ
Yes, letâs talk about privileged rectangles and oppression.
Whatâs a pencil?
It looks to me like exactly what it is: two essentially identical blocks filled with horizontal gray gradients. The dark edge of one block butts up against the light edge of the other.
If you conceal the edge, the gradient is less immediately obvious, but still quite visible.
It looks like a really confused attempt at illustrating the Cornsweet illusion.
I always thought The Dress was a contention between people who performed a bit of cognitive post-processing to the image to compensate for video saturation, lighting, and color balance, and those who didnât.
Is it still an illusion if itâs been on the internet a bazillion times? I just assumed they were the same because they always are in these things.
It is an illusion that is also based on how we perceive color/shade values based on perceived lighting.
Everyone cognitive post processes images. There are some people who see more color information. There are some people who have worked with images and trained their perception through exposure to many objects under varied lighting. Those two groups are more likely to see the dresses actual colors (blue/black).
One study noted that people that perceive blue (or all colors) more intensely see blue/black a much higher percentage of the time, as do people who regularly work with photography or digital images. The theory being that they had more visual information (in the case of the blue sensitive) or more training and exposure to objects under various lighting conditions (in the case of those that work with images) so those two groups were less easily fooled into perceiving different colors (white/gold). Those two groups are more likely to pick up the numerous visual clues in the image that flip if we see the object as been in too much or too little light and what type/color of light the image is exposed to.
As someone who regularly works with images I saw blue black right away, I cannot really pick apart my initial perception, as it was instantaneous. When i look at the image now I immediately register it as an over-exposed with light image, and that the light is a yellow hue, indicating to me that the blue is a much stronger blue and the greys much darker values then they might appear. The rest of the image makes this abundantly clear. The background. The light cast on both colors and the shadowing, etc. In order to perceive it as gold/white, you have to miss the visual clues in the rest of the image and think the dress is in a very dark and very blue/purple tinged shadowed light, which is contradictory to the rest of the images visual information.
But that illusion has been talked to death fairly recently⌠
I still donât understand why that dress confused so many people.
Well, if weâre going to play these sorts of games, I think it should be pointed out that A and B are not squares.
Stop messing with my mind, boingers. I already have drugs and alcohol for that.
The thing that perplexes me is why it wasnât âA dress with gold and a white-ish color that looks increasingly more blue under whatever lighting conditions weâre looking at in the other imagesâ.
I kept seeing these votes to decide whether it was âwhite and goldâ or âblack and blueâ when I thought the answer was âitâs not a pure white and the lightingâs kind of weird.â
Two identical gradients. What year is this? 1982?
I can remember a time when 6-bit grayscale graphics were bold and new. That was a long time ago.
I believe that Firesign Theater already addressed the issue with, âEverything You Know Is Wrongâ. Pithy, yet, there it is!
There is only one rectangle, with a repeating gradient.
The small gray one in the middle. The big one itâs sitting in looks to be white.
hey, hey, hey ⌠all polygons matter.
