This Might Explain Why That Dress Looks Blue And Black, And White And Gold

Your eyes, trying to compensate for poor lighting, are playing tricks on you.

By now, you've probably seen this dress and formed a really strong opinion about it.

White and gold? Blue and black? Literally thousands of people think they know!

People scoured online dress shops, trying to find another angle of the dress as definitive proof.

After a minor freak-out (because I somehow saw it both ways at different times), I asked my friend Ben, a postproduction supervisor in Los Angeles, to weigh in.

You know, the people who make your TV shows look good between filming and the time they hit your screen?

According to Ben, the photo — taken with a camera phone in poor lighting — casts the whites in a blue tone and mutes the gold to a darker color.

People who see blue and black are seeing the photo at face value. People who see gold and white are compensating to the photo's lighting and aesthetic.

Here's the dress with the blue-toned light taken out — a little color correction by our postproduction expert.

But then again, you can correct the photo in other ways and come to an entirely different conclusion.

@xfloormattx lowered the exposure and boosted saturation. What color is it?

WILL WE EVER KNOW?

Team #blueandblack is making some compelling arguments.

Here's more from the original poster, who saw the dress in a wedding in Scotland.

Adobe's color tools also pointed out what our eyes couldn't always tell us.

For those seeing #WhiteandGold in #TheDress (http://t.co/pNG9tXu5pU), @HopeTaylorPhoto ends the debate.

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