Mick's Muses's

Recently a global debate ensued on social media when two people were viewing a chance picture taken of a person wearing a particular dress. One viewer happened to comment on the gold and white dress while the other viewer said the dress was a blue and black colour. Both viewers new neither of them suffered from any form of colour blindness and both were emphatic at what they could see. Seeking advise from others they got mixed responses as to the colour variation which led to the social debate that went viral.

In the end the original dress was located and found to be blue and black but what the debate did show is different people do not always see the same thing and we assume by default that others are seeing what we see.

Apparently it turns out that everyone has different combinations of the genes that create the sense of colour for red, green and blue and because these genes are on the X chromosome, women tend to have more variations.

This tends to give women a more dynamic range of colours they see than men normally do.

This difference in the sense of colour by the following two examples.

It can be seen from the two images above that to many the image on the left appears to have a white tile and a black tile. However by drawing a horizontal grey line between the two it can be seen that they are actually both the same colour.

A similar effect was produced by Edward H Adelson  in the following two images.

Once again in the left image, to many people square A will appear grey and square B will appear white. If however two vertical grey bands are placed so the intersect both tiles, it can be see that both tiles are in fact grey. The effect of the colour illusion is so strong however that even when looking at the right image, if one tries to block out the two vertical grey lines in ones mind, square B can appear to alternate between white and grey.

This might help to explain why disputes sometimes arise when deciding on things like a colour scheme for a room in ones home. Two people may be unaware that their partner is not seeing the colour scheme that they are.

Filed under: Shades of Grey | Tagged: colour illusion, Edward H Adelson, global debate, optical illusion, Shades of Grey, social media |