Color illusion

[ewx]

Neat color illusion.

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Comments

[atreic.livejournal.com]

That's so neat I still don't quite believe it.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Oh, I believe it. I just don't believe my eyes. :o)

[j4.livejournal.com]

Wow!

[mpinna.livejournal.com]

I was pretty sure that was a pisstake until I actually did move my eyes!

[simont]

But then you realised you were pistaken?

[sparrowsion]

What disturbed me is that I blinked (without moving my eyes) and it went black and white then reverted to colour until I really moved my eyes. How does that work?

[antinomy.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's because it's happening in your retina. The reverse-video image is saturating the opposite-colour cones, so that when you stare at the B&W the whites and greys disproportionnately trigger the correct colour cones. Moving your eyes stops the illusion working because the overlay is now wrong and treated as 'noise' rather than sense by your brain.

[sparrowsion]

Yes, it's obvious (to me, anyway) that that's how the basic illusion works. What I'm wondering is why it went black and white and then reverted to colour when I blinked.

[antinomy.livejournal.com]

At a guess, blinking de-saturates your rods, which are fully saturated in normal daylight, so that the B&W brightness information they're providing overrules the odd-coloured cone information temporarily, until they re-saturate a few seconds later, and the cone-illusion takes over again. Cones are much slower to saturate and to recover than rods.

[antinomy.livejournal.com]

If you keep staring at it for about 20-30s, it goes back to black and white whether you move your eyes or not, as the cones refresh themselves.

[stephdairy.livejournal.com]

Doesn't quite work for me. I can vaguely believe that the sky might appear blue, but I have to stop concentrating on the image for the colours to work.

(S)

[gerald_duck]

It works a bit for me in only about five seconds. If that indicates anything about my eyesight, it's presumably bad rather than good.

I have to stare for longer to get the full effect, though.

[antinomy.livejournal.com]

I wonder if it works for people with some colour-blindness...

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Someone at work said it did work for color blind people (so I assume they are one...)

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

My brother, who discovered a few years ago he is slightly colour-blind, (and who objected to his wife's choice of decor for their bathroom with "I refuse to decorate my bathroom a colour I can't even see!") responded with "Wow—that's AMAZING!"

[gerald_duck]

I tried it on nunfetishist and it worked.

[nunfetishist.livejournal.com]

Or rather, you enquired as to if it worked. I had already checked long before you asked :)

[reddragdiva]

Excellent!

[kjaneway.livejournal.com]

I particularly like the way you can move your eyes then refocus on the spot and the colour comes back.