I love all you techie guys. The person who took the pic said its black and blue. End of story. The so called 'facts' or 'scientific evidence' people think they can prove or disprove anything.
I am not sure why people are claiming to see a blue and black dress, and I've seen all kinds of explanations from monitor angle to how many rods or cones our eyes have.
My wife and I have had this discussion at length and I've decided to put my fancy art degree to use. Well, not really, just Photoshop's color picker.
If you don't know about color picker, it is a tool in Photoshop where you can select a pixel on the image and it will return the RBG/CMYK/HTML code for that color and where it shows up on the color wheel. No rods and cones, no angled monitors, just the facts.
As you can see in the image above, this is the default color picker set to true black, or coordinates 0,0,0 in RGB. This is the blackest black that ever blacked in the world of Photoshop. Also note the white arrow pointing to the two smaller arrows on the gradient color bar. Those arrows indicate which basic color has been selected.
Here is the original dress image with the black/blue dress next to it. The tips of the arrows by the numbers correspond to the exact places on each dress where I picked the colors from using color picker.
Below are the colors Photoshop "sees" as well as where in the color spectrum those color live.
This one is the smoking gun. Photoshop has determined that the color of that pixel is a brownish/tanish/goldish color belonging to the orange family.
In this second picker image, the pixel is a very dark blue, appearing almost black due to contrast against the lighter color.
The third image is a light blue - note this one still resides in the blue family. This may be where people are seeing blue, but if so it is a super light blue (more of a "cool" grey") than a bright blue.
Definitely blue.
Yes, I have too much time on my hands, but the color picker is what it is. If you are seeing a blue and black dress in the original image, look to the right of the arrow at what you see as blue, and then look at the first color picker under the dresses. Do you see light brown or do you still see blue? If blue, you may have some form of color blindness. Not an accusation, and I'm not calling anyone a liar - you see what you interpret you are seeing - but I just don't see a blue and black dress.
Edit: Upon further review, I also have to call into question the black and blue dress the woman is wearing as well. If you look along the bottom of the seam by her legs there is white sticking out underneath. Also by her right armpit (left center of image) there is white showing under the blue.
If you tighten up the levels along the side of the dress, the shape of the dress betrays the Photoshop work whoever published that first image did to cover up the white. Notice the jagged angles, which are telltale signs of the lazy usage of a polygonal lasso tool, another one of Photoshop's more popular tools. (This lasso tool tends to always make selections that look like saw teeth.)
The debate that divided the world is now being used as a powerful campaign to raise public awareness around domestic violence. Salvation Army’s South African chapter brilliantly took #The Dress, which pitted millions of people against each other in camps of white and gold versus black and blue, and asked on Twitter: “Why is it so hard to see black and blue?” Against an image of a woman wearing a white and gold version of the dress, it reads: “The only illusion is if you think it was her choice. One in 6 women are victims of abuse. Stop abuse against women.”
