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How to make a #theDress

How to make a #theDress
How to make a #theDress
If we completely understand how a phenomenon works, we should be able to produce it ourselves. However, the individual differences in color appearance observed with #theDress seem to be a peculiarity of that photo, and it remains unclear how the proposed mechanisms underlying #theDress can be generalized to other images. Here, we developed a simple algorithm that transforms any image with bicolored objects into an image with the properties of #theDress. We measured the colors perceived in such images and compared them to those perceived in #theDress. Color adjustments confirmed that observers strongly differ in how they perceive the colors of the new images in a similar way as for #theDress. Most importantly, these differences were not unsystematic, but correlated with how observers perceive #theDress. These results imply that the color distribution is sufficient to produce the striking individual differences in color perception originally observed with #theDress—at least as long as the image appears realistic and hence compels the viewer to make assumptions about illuminations and surfaces. The algorithm can be used for stimulus production beyond this study.
1084-7529
A202-A211
Witzel, Christoph
dfb994f1-7007-441a-9e1a-ddb167f44166
Toscani, Matteo
aeaee1b6-daa3-4ac3-b32f-626cbc94d943
Witzel, Christoph
dfb994f1-7007-441a-9e1a-ddb167f44166
Toscani, Matteo
aeaee1b6-daa3-4ac3-b32f-626cbc94d943

Witzel, Christoph and Toscani, Matteo (2020) How to make a #theDress. Journal of the Optical Society of America A: Optics and Image Science, and Vision, 37 (4), A202-A211. (doi:10.1364/JOSAA.381311).

Record type: Article

Abstract

If we completely understand how a phenomenon works, we should be able to produce it ourselves. However, the individual differences in color appearance observed with #theDress seem to be a peculiarity of that photo, and it remains unclear how the proposed mechanisms underlying #theDress can be generalized to other images. Here, we developed a simple algorithm that transforms any image with bicolored objects into an image with the properties of #theDress. We measured the colors perceived in such images and compared them to those perceived in #theDress. Color adjustments confirmed that observers strongly differ in how they perceive the colors of the new images in a similar way as for #theDress. Most importantly, these differences were not unsystematic, but correlated with how observers perceive #theDress. These results imply that the color distribution is sufficient to produce the striking individual differences in color perception originally observed with #theDress—at least as long as the image appears realistic and hence compels the viewer to make assumptions about illuminations and surfaces. The algorithm can be used for stimulus production beyond this study.

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newdresses_manu R_clean - Accepted Manuscript
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Accepted/In Press date: 18 February 2020
e-pub ahead of print date: 20 March 2020
Published date: 1 April 2020
Additional Information: Funding Information: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) (SFB TRR 135 C2). We thank Julia Lahoda and Joanna Szczotka for their help with data collection. Publisher Copyright: © 2020 Optical Society of America.

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 438661
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/438661
ISSN: 1084-7529
PURE UUID: 34fa1ede-fa0c-4fa3-ab11-0ce5a2edcbc2
ORCID for Christoph Witzel: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9944-2420

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Date deposited: 20 Mar 2020 17:30
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 05:22

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Author: Matteo Toscani

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