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The Optical Illusions Thread

Have we done the grey/pink shoe thing?

What colour is this shoe? Is it grey/turquoise or pink/white?
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People with right brain dominance will see it as pink/white and people with left brain dominance will see it as grey/turquoise. I find it endlessly fascinating that two peole can look at the same picture and see two different things purely because their brain decides what their "reailty" is. Now extrapolate that to everything we see, hear, touch and smell.
 
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Um... straight away I can only see it as grey and turquoise.

Mr Zebra on the other hand can only see it is pink and white.

How fascinating! What does that mean, then?

EDIT: That's both of us looking at it simultaneously on the same computer, by the way... so we can rule out differences in monitors or whatever.
 
Have we done the grey/pink show thing?

What colour is this shoe? Is it grey/turquoise or pink/white?
59de75ddc150553c008b487d


People with right brain dominance will see it as pink/white and people with left brain dominance will see it as grey/turquoise. I find it endlessly fascinating that two peole can look at the same picture and see two different things purely because their brain decides what their "reailty" is. Now extrapolate that to everything we see, hear, touch and smell.
I thought "grey/turquoise", then I confirmed it by looking at the RGB values. Anybody who thinks "pink/white" probably has a bit of colour-blindness. Of course, this photo is the product of its lighting, so there's not much we can do about that.
 
I thought "grey/turquoise", then I confirmed it by looking at the RGB values. Anybody who thinks "pink/white" probably has a bit of colour-blindness. Of course, this photo is the product of its lighting, so there's not much we can do about that.

I'm not sure if it's a touch of colour blindness, left/right brain dominance or quality of cones in the eye. For example, my daughter is left handed showing right brain dominance. She often "sees" different colours that I do (when there are stripes of colour on top of a base colour). She has however, passed a colour blindness test without any problems.
 
I adjusted the colour and I think this is what it should look like:

Ooh now that is pink and white definitely!

I just showed it to Mr Zebra and he said it is exactly the same as the first picture. I wanted to clarify that so I scrolled back up to the original picture and he says the original one looks slightly darker than the 'adjusted' one (but they are both still pink and white to him)... but...

... and here's the kicker...

... now that I've seen the adjusted one, the original one no longer looks grey and turquoise to me, but now looks a darker pink (than the adjusted one) and a sort of off´-white rather than turquoise.

I'm mightily confused now!!
 
Ooh now that is pink and white definitely!

I just showed it to Mr Zebra and he said it is exactly the same as the first picture. I wanted to clarify that so I scrolled back up to the original picture and he says the original one looks slightly darker than the 'adjusted' one (but they are both still pink and white to him)... but...

... and here's the kicker...

... now that I've seen the adjusted one, the original one no longer looks grey and turquoise to me, but now looks a darker pink (than the adjusted one) and a sort of off´-white rather than turquoise.

I'm mightily confused now!!
The fact that he thinks they're both the same? What does that say?
I dunno.
 
Have we done the grey/pink show thing?

What colour is this shoe? Is it grey/turquoise or pink/white?
59de75ddc150553c008b487d


People with right brain dominance will see it as pink/white and people with left brain dominance will see it as grey/turquoise. I find it endlessly fascinating that two peole can look at the same picture and see two different things purely because their brain decides what their "reailty" is. Now extrapolate that to everything we see, hear, touch and smell.

Pink & white.
 
The fact that he thinks they're both the same? What does that say?
I dunno.


Well, I'm more confused by why I now see the original picture as pink and white when I only saw it as grey and turquoise before.

What are colours anyway... do colours even exist... have I spent too long on this thread...

:conf2:
 
I adjusted the colour and I think this is what it should look like:

To my eyes there's a big difference in the original [grey/green] & your colour adjusted [pink/white] one. Everything looks more red shifted. How did you arrive at this colour balance as being more accurate?
 
Does everyone else see the stripe on the side of the shoe (what would be the Nike swoop, if that were the brand) as the same shade as the laces and/or the sole?

I see the swoop as white, while the laces and sole are a sort of minty green. The shoe itself is obviously pink. But Ringo suggests that the common division is pink/white vs grey/turquoise. I have a foot in both shoes camps. And that fascinates me, because consciously accessing information from my right brain hemisphere is something of a challenge for me.
 
According to the neuroscientist quoted in this blog entry the perception of different colors is a real phenomenon, but any purported connection to right- / left-brain dominance is BS.

... Matt Johnson, PhD, a professor of neuroscience and founder of neuromarketing blog PopNeuro, wants you to know the cold, hard facts. Whether you see the shoe as green and grey or pink and white has nothing to do with being “left-brained or right-brained.” And, by extension, says zero about how artsy, intellectual, or analytical you are. “There’s a lot of talk about people being right-brained or left-brained,” says Dr. Johnson. “To a neuroscientist, this is second only to ‘we use only 10 percent‘ as the most frustrating colloquial belief about the brain.”

The idea of learning something about your personality from a widespread meme is tempting—no argument there. But, according to Dr. Johnson, it’s nothing short of fantasy. ...

Whether or not you see a pink or blue shoe does have to do with your brain (I mean, duh)—but it doesn’t say much about your personality. “[It depends on how the] visual system is compensating for the bad white balance of the photo,” explains the neuroscientist. “The pixels are objectively grey and teal, but this can look very different to us depending on what our visual system uses as a reference point. These differences don’t come down to left brain right brain, but to subtle, individual differences in visual processing.” ...
SOURCE: https://www.wellandgood.com/good-advice/left-brain-vs-right-brain-shoe-color/
 
Does everyone else see the stripe on the side of the shoe (what would be the Nike swoop, if that were the brand) as the same shade as the laces and/or the sole?

Yep for me (and Mr Zebra) the laces, stripe and sole are all the same colour (albeit not the same colour we both see - looking back at the original I still see grey-turquoise, I must have looked at the wrong picture :sorry: when I said earlier that they now both looked the same).


According to the neuroscientist quoted in this blog entry the perception of different colors is a real phenomenon, but any purported connection to right- / left-brain dominance is BS.

SOURCE: https://www.wellandgood.com/good-advice/left-brain-vs-right-brain-shoe-color/

Ah interesting because I'd got curious about this left/right brain thing and looked it up and the descriptions seemed almost opposite for me and Mr Zebra to what the results of our 'colour perception' of this shoe would suggest.


Something complicated perception-wise must be going on with this shoe though, it is a fascinating subject. :)
 
The common explanation is left/right brain but as I said, I don't buy it completely. I was testing the waters a little there with a pseudo explanation. I think it is due to changes/differences in colour receptors in the eyes when certain colours are beside one another.

When I zoom in on the shoe, my daughter sees the shoe as grey and turquoise but when I show her the whole picture she experiences it as pale pink and white.
 
To my eyes there's a big difference in the original [grey/green] & your colour adjusted [pink/white] one. Everything looks more red shifted. How did you arrive at this colour balance as being more accurate?
I made the assumption that the laces were white, then colour shifted the RGB balance to achieve a white colour on the laces. It's just my guesstimation, that's all.

Oh yes, and I looked at the skin tone on the hand as well. If anything, it is probably a little too red now I look at it again...
 
The color levels have definitely been manipulated in the viral version of the photo. The neuroscientist's comments quoted above refer to a "bad white balance" in the photo.

My eyes detect faint traces of pink / reddish color in the darker areas of the picture, so I suspect it has something to do with differential final color attribution based on differences in relative brightness.
 
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