White and Gold or Blue and Black? Our Photoshop Color Test #TheDress

Are you questioning your own sanity because of the white/gold or black/blue dress controversy?

Is the dress in the image above white and gold or black and blue? As it turns out, people see it differently. So who is right and who is wrong? What is the real color of the dress? And finally, what does it mean if you see it as, let’s say, white and gold instead of black and blue?

Does it mean you are aging? Does it mean there is something unusual about your perception? Your brain? Your defense mechanisms?

Our perception of colors differs — there is nothing new about that. But to the point of seeing something as white when others see it as “clearly” black? Could it really be that different?

Even high-profile websites got into the game, trying to explain the science behind this phenomenon. Many assured readers that the dress was really black and blue and that, if they saw it as gold and white, the problem was their perception, their aging eyes, or something happening in their brain.

This video was widely accepted as proof that the dress in the image above was actually black and blue:

We didn’t buy into that completely. We decided not to rely on our aging eyes or subjective perception. We were not even going to believe the video above without question. After all, there could be other color variations available, or the image itself could have been altered.

What we did was very simple: we took several color samples using the Photoshop Eyedropper tool. You can see the results in the image above.

• The lace appears golden or brownish, which is exactly what you would expect if that area of the image looks gold.
• The lighter areas appear bluish, which is also normal if the dress is being perceived as white under unusual lighting.

White is almost never absolute white, or HTML color code #FFFFFF, in this type of photo because lighting, shadows, and surrounding colors all affect how it appears.

Digital artists know that bluish and grayish tones are often used in areas that are meant to look white. In the right context, the result still looks white.

We included HTML color codes so that you can carry out your own investigation. There is no chance that these HTML samples are wrong, because they were taken directly from the image. We also filled larger rectangles with the sampled colors so you can see how different they look on a plain, absolute-white background.

What appears to be white in this photo is indeed light blue, but that does not automatically mean that the dress in the image looks like the royal blue shown in the video.

So what is the conclusion? Based on our color test, the image itself contains light bluish and golden-brown tones, which helps explain why many people see the dress in the photo as white and gold, or white and brown.

Another possibility is that the image was altered or affected by unusual lighting. What about the video? It could be showing the actual dress under different conditions, or even another version of the dress. What about those who see it as black and blue? That is a great question! 🙂