(Image credit: Cecilia Bleasdale)
There’s been quite a debate among Tumblr users about the colors of this dress. The picture was posted by Swiked, and then passed around, igniting arguments wherever it showed up. I looked at it and said, “That’s white with gold lace.” Then I read three posts at Buzzfeed about the controversy surrounding the colors, with plenty of pictures of the dress with various color corrections and even a catalog entry, and they determined that the dress is actually blue with black lace.
But what really floored me was when I returned to the original picture and saw it as blue and black! I could not make myself see white and gold again at that point. THEN I went somewhere else for about twenty minutes and returned to the original picture. It appeared white and gold again- for a minute or two, then it turned blue and black again. Now, my eyesight isn’t the greatest, but this is one weird phenomena.
Update: There's a discussion of some of the factors going into this photo here.
If we had a reference sample of, say, white paper pinned to it, it'd be a lot easier to tell.
Being seriously colour-blind, I've learned over the years to hold back on colour judgements until I've seen it in several lights.
I'm fitting out a shop next week - and since we don't know what colour lights the new customer will require we're putting in fancy LED units that do three different colours of white. We've used them elsewhere, and the customers really like them - and they're only about three quid each more expensive.
And people wonder why there are so many false color images in science, even when images are taken in visible wavelengths. A few too many times I've people seen become almost indignant, "Why don't you just take a 'normal'/'real' photo?"