# What colour is this dress?



## leigha (Aug 14, 2014)

Some people say they see white and gold, some say they see black and blue. I see white and gold.


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## Gurpy (Aug 8, 2014)

light blue and light brown


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## leigha (Aug 14, 2014)

When I clicked on this thread to see this reply it looked blue and black for about two seconds before it turned white and gold again.


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## Slagasauras (Jun 26, 2013)

I just saw this on tumblr, freaky.
Black and Blue.


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## Word Dispenser (May 18, 2012)

Maybe it's because I'm an artist and I.. uh.. Look at things a lot, but... I can't see how this dress isn't black (or some kind of dark yellowish-brown) and blue. Visually. 

It doesn't seem freaky at all, unless I'm missing something and there's some kind of optical illusion.


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## Juggernaut (Jul 9, 2012)

I really, really don't understand how this dress can be anything but black/brown and blue.

Unless you're colorblind...???


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## Royolis (Feb 22, 2015)

I think it's because of the shadow people are seeing black/blue. It's white/yellow guys. The person who took this picture needs to learn how to use flash. 

And is it weird that before posting here, like 30 seconds ago, my room mate brought this up to me lol


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## TheProphetLaLa (Aug 18, 2014)

I see white and gold….


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## leigha (Aug 14, 2014)

Half of my friends think it's black and blue and half of them think it's white and gold.

The colour keeps changing for me. Like, I'll scroll up on this thread and the dress will look black and blue for a few moments before looking white and gold again I have no idea what's going on


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## melancholy (Aug 14, 2014)

I just came across this post on Tumblr.
But yeah, I see a light blue/white and gold.


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## Darkbloom (Aug 11, 2013)

How would it be black??


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## 1000BugsNightSky (May 8, 2014)

Where is the black coming from? 

I definitely see white and gold, but the lighting makes it confusing. Lighting wise, I see blue, but ignoring the lighting, I see white and gold. 

Please explain the black?


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## Tetsuo Shima (Nov 24, 2014)

Blueish white and ugly cardboard brown.


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## Juggernaut (Jul 9, 2012)

Moonious said:


> Where is the black coming from?
> 
> I definitely see white and gold, but the lighting makes it confusing. Lighting wise, I see blue, but ignoring the lighting, I see white and gold.
> 
> Please explain the black?


Blue is the main fabric. Black/brown is the lace. I don't understand how this could be white or gold in the slightest. I don't see either of these things


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## Darkbloom (Aug 11, 2013)

WHERE'S THE BLACK????:frustrating:


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## Darkbloom (Aug 11, 2013)

I seriously feel like people are trolling by saying there's black


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## leigha (Aug 14, 2014)

That's what I thought at first too!! But now I'm only seeing it in blue and black.


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## Juggernaut (Jul 9, 2012)

I 100% promise that I see black in the lace trim.

Google search this image. All the related photos are blue and black dresses. Unless those are also gold and white to you??

Would you say the gold is gold like a gold bar? Or like a dark gold?? Is the gold the lace?


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## TheProphetLaLa (Aug 18, 2014)

I wonder whats making the difference? I tried brightening and darkening my screen but it remained white and gold. The only thing that seemed to make it remotely black and blue is when I bent my screen to a certain degree so that the angle of the lighting changed. I wonder if its the different different laptops, or browsers or what.


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## Darkbloom (Aug 11, 2013)

I can't make it appear anything but white and gold no matter what I do


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## GoosePeelings (Nov 10, 2013)

White and gold. Or maybe white and bronze. I'm trying to see the black+blue so hard..

It seems like it really is black and blue.



> all i did with the first picture is decrease the brightness and get rid of the warm lighting filter??? does this make sense to everyone now???


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## StunnedFox (Dec 20, 2013)

I'm seeing the dress as mainly blue - I'm not good with shade names, but sort of like lilac if it were a variant of blue rather than purple? - with a metallic sort of brown colour that I guess could be called "gold", but looks duller to me that what I'd expect "gold" as a colour to look like: more bronze to my eyes.


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## stargazing grasshopper (Oct 25, 2013)

It's actual appearance is light blue & brass, but I could assume that it's white & gold but appears otherwise due to shadowing.


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## Pressed Flowers (Oct 8, 2014)

To quote myself:


alittlebear said:


> THIS STUPID DRESS
> 
> Now it's invaded the forum :/
> 
> ...


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## Pressed Flowers (Oct 8, 2014)

GoosePeelings said:


> White and gold. Or maybe white and bronze. I'm trying to see the black+blue so hard..
> 
> It seems like it really is black and blue.


But this definitely looks black and blue??? I don't know what's happening??


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## Deus Absconditus (Feb 27, 2011)

Hmmmm.......


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## dweeb (Feb 18, 2015)

you all sound like lunatics


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## SilverRain (May 15, 2014)

GoosePeelings said:


>



The dress in the first post is still brown and a lighter blue, now this one is black and a much darker blue. 




dweeb said:


> you all sound like lunatics


There's a website called Lunatic Outpost, which is likely where we belong.


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## Quernus (Dec 8, 2011)

I see... Christmas colours.


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## dweeb (Feb 18, 2015)

Quernus said:


> I see... Christmas colours.


ok that is seriously creepy. i was seconds away from posting "am i the only one who sees red and green" before i read your post


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## Aletheia (Dec 25, 2014)

What the actual fuck. So, initially I saw black and blue. Couldn't understand how it could be seen as anything but that. I tried barely closing my eyes - still black and blue. I then tried angling the screen on my lap top down until it was about 1/4 from closed, while still looking at the image and it turned WHITE and GOLD. AHHHHHH. I open the screen completely and it's still white and gold. Until I blink my eyes and then it's black and blue again. 

What is this sorcery?


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## Antipode (Jul 8, 2012)

Time to prove to you guys the color of this dress.

Firs the original photo.

You can follow these directions to see for yourself on your end.









(Click these to enlarge)

I decided to use paint to prove the colors. So once in paint, I used something known as a Color Picker, which directly copies a color you pick on a photo.









Now, I decided to use that color to paint it on the dress, so you can see the color fully--I think decided to take a Color Picture of the lightest blue on that dress (I circled it in red) to compare it to the bluer part. Then I decided to take actual white and paint it next to those, allowing you to compare it for yourself.









Finally, if that isn't enough, I decided to actually use the color spectrum to prove it. I Color Picked the exact same spot, and then I pulled up the color spectrum to see where it lied. As you can see in the screen shot below, the color lies in the blue spectrum. 









The color spectrum is not affected by human eye bias.

---

As for the explanation, it all comes down to perception of light. Some people even see the color change randomly, which, again, is due to our eyes changing the perception of light, and thus perception of color.


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## Lexicon Devil (Mar 14, 2014)

Wow !! I first saw white and gold. Then when I scrolled up after reading all the posts I saw blue and black. 

Dress colors + bad photo + viewing it on a computer screen + limited human perception = optical illusion.


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## Cephalonimbus (Dec 6, 2010)

It's a picture taken without a flash against a backlight, so you have to take into consideration that it appears darker on the photo than it actually is. I'm almost 100% sure it's white and gold.

It makes sense that people see it as blue, as the pixels in the photo actually are blue, but this seems to me like a result of a blue glow caused by the fluorescent light in the background... you can clearly see a blueish halo around the light source. If you see black in this at all you need to get your eyes checked though. Even the darkest parts are yellow-brownish, and taking into consideration the overall darkening and blueish hue of the photo, that means it's lighter and more yellow than it appears here.


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## Quernus (Dec 8, 2011)

dweeb said:


> ok that is seriously creepy. i was seconds away from posting "am i the only one who sees red and green" before i read your post


I was joking, to try to cope with how mind-boggling this whole thing is... and now you have made it worse. THANKS A LOT


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## AesSidhe (Dec 14, 2014)

It's Blue and Black people ...


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## leigha (Aug 14, 2014)

Is there a way to change my vote? Or does someone that thinks it's white and gold wanna vote blue and black on behalf of me to balance it out 'cause I've changed my mind there's no way it's white and gold


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## Cephalonimbus (Dec 6, 2010)

Deus Absconditus said:


> Hmmmm.......


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## Deus Absconditus (Feb 27, 2011)

Cephalonimbus said:


>


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## SilverRain (May 15, 2014)

Deus Absconditus said:


> Hmmmm.......


This is 7883a5:

#7883a5 Color Hex

This is 7a6a48:

#7a6a48 Color Hex

The color in the first link looks light-ish blue and the second medium brown, the same as in post #52 and just like the dress in the first post. Do others see those colors in the links, or do they look white, gold or black, as some people are seeing the dress?


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## perpetuallyreticent (Sep 24, 2014)

Saw white and gold at first. Then I looked away from my computer for a few minutes, looked back and it was clear blue and somewhat off black. Now it's back to white/gold.


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## Deus Absconditus (Feb 27, 2011)

SilverRain said:


> This is 7883a5:
> 
> #7883a5 Color Hex
> 
> ...


I see those colors in the links, along with seeing those same colors in the dress in the op, along with the pics in #52, and its the only colors I've been seeing:



Deus Absconditus said:


> I see blue and gold but the gold could pass for light brown.


I also added in another post in another part of the forum that I could see it passing for green also, but like a "dirty green". I haven't been able to see white or black.


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## Then (Oct 1, 2014)

Just saw this on sixpenceee. I see white and gold.


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## 1000BugsNightSky (May 8, 2014)

According to Business Insider, It's officially _*black and blue*_. The story is posted below. 

I still can't see it. 

http://www.businessinsider.com/origin-of-white-gold-or-black-blue-dress-2015-2


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## SilverRain (May 15, 2014)

Moonious said:


> According to Business Insider, It's officially _*black and blue*_. The story is posted below.
> 
> I still can't see it.
> 
> Origin of white gold or black blue dress - Business Insider


That's too weird!

One of the tests I took, a color arrangement test, was similar to the last row:

Color Test - Online Color Challenge | X-Rite

When I first looked at the colors out of order I thought it would be impossible to arrange them correctly, though I was able to do so in less than 30 seconds. Since they were numbered 1 to whatever on the bottom side of the colors, it was a quick double check. My color blind relative took 5-10 minutes and when finished had them entirely mixed up.

I don't understand why I can't see the dress colors correctly, if what the article says is true.


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## Cephalonimbus (Dec 6, 2010)

SilverRain said:


> That's too weird!
> 
> One of the tests I took, a color arrangement test, was similar to the last row:
> 
> ...


This isn't about colour perception per se, it's about the perception of colour in the context of a particularly confusing lighting situation. It most likely has very little to do with the cone and rod receptors in our eyes, and more likely with the subconscious processing of the rest of the photograph.

I think it's similar to this optical illusion, where the center squares appear to have a different colour: The top looks brown and the other looks yellow. In fact they are the exact same colour. Our perception is influenced by subconsciously taking the lighting into account, which makes us see the colours differently despite their objectively identical RGB/hex value.











As for the test...


* *















As you can see, I have a perfect score on the test... but I did see the dress as white and gold, which is apparently wrong. If that article is true and the dress is indeed black and blue, there's something strange going on in the picture that threw a lot of people off about what's going on with the lighting, because it appears to be taken against a backlight... but that's not how backlit photographs typically behave: backlight makes the foreground object appear much darker than it would be under normal lighting circumstances, but that can't be the case if the dress is actually black and blue.


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## Tater Tot (May 28, 2012)

Anybody who says black and blue has black and blue bruises around each of their eyes because that ain't black and blue. :///


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## Ntuitive (Jan 6, 2012)

It's blue. There must be some kind of weird optical illusion going on for most people who see the white and gold.


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## Fern (Sep 2, 2012)

I DID NT GIVE THIS IMAGE PERMISSION TO TAKE OVER MY LIFE.

Seriously I'm seeing it everywhere. I thought I could escape from it here, but apparently not!

The first time I saw it, I thought "Oh a god and white dress. Cool. Whatever."" and I calmly scrolled past it. Then I saw it again and it was so strikingly blue and black I wondered how I cud have seen it any other way...

And now it just keeps changing ( ≧Д≦)​


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## 1000BugsNightSky (May 8, 2014)

Wtf? I see the blue now.


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## knife (Jul 10, 2013)

Count me as white and gold too.

I am in fact _trying_ to see it as black and blue ... and failing.


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## 1000BugsNightSky (May 8, 2014)

Gosh, this dress is terrifying now. I think I now have a phobia against black and dark blue dresses. It reminds me of a hornet or wasp or something. I would like to go back to the white please.


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## TheEpicPolymath (Dec 5, 2014)

I don't get it.


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## Apolo (Aug 15, 2014)

The actual dress is, in fact Black and Blue, even though my eyes see white and gold. 

The Science of Why No One Agrees on the Color of This Dress | WIRED

"Not since Monica Lewinsky was a White House intern has one blue dress been the source of so much consternation.

(And yes, it’s blue.)"


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## pivot_turn (Dec 10, 2014)

Well as people have pointed out, it seems like it is indeed blue.

What I see is either blue and black or blue and bronze/brown, but I can also see how the bronze could be light reflected on the blue. 

In the link Apolo posted, I can see how people get white and gold for the lightest of the images, but I'd still see the dress even in that picture as pale blue, though with a possibility of being white.


Anyway, I voted none of those, because yes I see blue, but more unsure about the black/brown issue (though with more pictures it turns out to be black).


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## Lexicon Devil (Mar 14, 2014)

We Asked a Color Vision Expert About the Color of that Dress | VICE | United States


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## Vimerge (Mar 24, 2014)

This thread puzzles me. Are all of you part of an elaborate troll or something? You can't all be colourblind.. 

It is nothing but black and blue. I can understand some see "gold" in the black that's being shed light on, making it look like a light brown but it is obviously black.

How can that blue be replaced by white? Either your screens aren't calibrated properly or you are in fact colourblind... even though most of you claiming to see white and gold are females. And they say men are more inclined to be colourblind?


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## lunai (Feb 22, 2014)

I see black lace with blue fabric. It cannot be white, because there is a white/black dress behind it and it does not match. See those cow-like patterned dresses on the rack in the lower left? The yellow hue in the lighting is hitting the black lace, making it appear slightly brown in some areas.

Here is the same photo with the brightness lowered and contrast increased. Does it still look white and gold to some people? Curious..maybe it's due to differently calibrated screens. 










Another photo of the dress, in contrast standing next to a white dress:


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## Vimerge (Mar 24, 2014)

I came across an interesting theory:



> Your eyes have retinas, the things that let you interpret color. There’s rods, round things, and cones that stick out, which is what gives your eye a textured appearance in the colored part. The “cones” see color. The “rods” see shade, like black, white and grey. Cones only work when enough light passes through. So while I see the fabric as white, someone else may see it as blue because my cones aren’t responding to the dim lighting. My rods see it as a shade (white). There’s three cones, small, medium and large. They are blue sensitive, green sensitive, and red sensitive.
> As for the black bit (which I see as gold), it’s called additive mixing. Blue, green and red are the main colors for additive mixing. This is where it gets really tricky. Subtractive mixing, such as with paint, means the more colors you add the murkier it gets until it’s black. ADDITIVE mixing, when you add the three colors eyes see best, red, green and blue, (not to be confused with primary colors red, blue and yellow) it makes pure white.
> —Blue and Black: In conclusion, your retina’s cones are more high functioning, and this results in your eyes doing subtractive mixing.
> —White and Gold: our eyes don’t work well in dim light so our retinas rods see white, and this makes them less light sensitive, causing additive mixing, (that of green and red), to make gold.
> **** UPDATE to prove this theory I turned my phone brightness from the lowest to highest and saw it switching from white and gold (at the lowest) to light blue and darker gold (at the highest) meaning people that see blue and black are more sensitive to light (better eyesight and not looking at the sun like your moms told you)


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## He's a Superhero! (May 1, 2013)

Purple and khaki?


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## Vayne (Nov 6, 2014)

The Science of Why No One Agrees on the Color of This Dress | WIRED


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## Lexicon Devil (Mar 14, 2014)

Vimerge said:


> This thread puzzles me. Are all of you part of an elaborate troll or something? You can't all be colourblind..
> 
> It is nothing but black and blue. I can understand some see "gold" in the black that's being shed light on, making it look like a light brown but it is obviously black.
> 
> How can that blue be replaced by white? Either your screens aren't calibrated properly or you are in fact colourblind... even though most of you claiming to see white and gold are females. And they say men are more inclined to be colourblind?


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## Lexicon Devil (Mar 14, 2014)




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## DemonD (Jun 12, 2012)

Dirty white and Copper. So I'm in the white and gold camp.

The effect this dress has on people amuses me.


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## L'Enfant Terrible (Jun 8, 2014)

When I looked at this (on another site) on my macbook I saw it as white and gold. When I look at the image posted here using my phone it looks black and blue.


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## AesSidhe (Dec 14, 2014)

Ok sooooooooooo my second post.

When I put my laptop screen on Normal Colors it is very clearly blue and black, when I put it on Gamma Correction it is darker blue and black (but some parts become a bit dark, dirty yellowish because of how the light falls on the dress), on Vivid Colors the Blue looks like the dress has been washed too often and lost some of its color, the black is still black, but the same spot on the top that appeared dirty yellowish on the Gamma Correction colors is now less dirty, but still clearly black but reflecting light. On Theater Mode blue and black, and finally on Soft Mode, it's a bit lighter blue and still black, with on top a part that is reflecting a lot of light.

So in only 2 color modes does the dress 'appear' to have a dirty yellowish color on some spots, because of the way the light comes into the room and is reflected on the dress. Never does the blue appear white


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## Deejaz (Feb 19, 2014)

always been blue and black. At first I thought people were playing around with me, and then I thought they were nutty. Now I'm the one feeling nutty.


> that the white-gold prejudice favors the idea of seeing the dress under strong daylight. _“I bet night owls are more likely to see it as blue-black,”_ Conway says.


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## AesSidhe (Dec 14, 2014)

Deejaz said:


> always been blue and black. At first I thought people were playing around with me, and then I thought they were nutty. Now I'm the one feeling nutty.


Don't worry, you're not nutty, it's just people having their computers on wrong color modes


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## Darkbloom (Aug 11, 2013)

AesSidhe said:


> Don't worry, you're not nutty, it's just people having their computers on wrong color modes


You're kidding,right?


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## AesSidhe (Dec 14, 2014)

Living dead said:


> You're kidding,right?


Kidding about what part?


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## Darkbloom (Aug 11, 2013)

AesSidhe said:


> Kidding about what part?


Both,I think people who see blue and black when there's white and mustard are pretty nutty


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## Vimerge (Mar 24, 2014)

Jeff Felis said:


>


This is why we need feminism amirite? 



Living dead said:


> You're kidding,right?


I'm sorry lady but it is (as it has been proven) black and blue. Don't make her feel bad for having properly functioning retinas!


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## AesSidhe (Dec 14, 2014)

Living dead said:


> Both,I think people who see blue and black when there's white and mustard are pretty nutty


Go look at my post just before, it talks about how 5 different screen settings alter colors a bit and give the idea of it looking dirty yellow in some settings


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## Cephalonimbus (Dec 6, 2010)

Jeff Felis said:


> We Asked a Color Vision Expert About the Color of that Dress | VICE | United States


_"It was kind of like the time a Redditor posted "TIL that roughly half of men wipe standing up and the other half wipe sitting down, and most people don't realize the other group exists.""_










The link to the actual poll seems to be dead but I need to know more. This is a lot more intriguing than that dress stuff.


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## To_august (Oct 13, 2013)

I see blue and brown. The latter can be black due too crappy adjustments made to the photo. But white as the dress colour? No way.


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## Darkbloom (Aug 11, 2013)

Vimerge said:


> I'm sorry lady but it is (as it has been proven) black and blue. Don't make her feel bad for having properly functioning retinas!


Making whom feel bad?

Anyway,someone before mentioned something about display too,makes no sense at all


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## 1000BugsNightSky (May 8, 2014)

AesSidhe said:


> Go look at my post just before, it talks about how 5 different screen settings alter colors a bit and give the idea of it looking dirty yellow in some settings


Screen settings don't do anything for me. It's random and I can't change the way i see it. I've looked at it 3 different times, white, blue, and white again. 1 or the other, never both.


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## Darkbloom (Aug 11, 2013)

AesSidhe said:


> Go look at my post just before, it talks about how 5 different screen settings alter colors a bit and give the idea of it looking dirty yellow in some settings


Yeah but this is WHITE and MUSTARD,very clear.My cousin sees very clear black and blue.On the same phone.


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## Darkbloom (Aug 11, 2013)

Omg this is so frustrating lol


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## AesSidhe (Dec 14, 2014)

Living dead said:


> Omg this is so frustrating lol


I have an idea, but it'll need a new poll to try and prove or disprove if the idea is correct. Give me a moment to post it


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