First, it would be great if you can spare 2 mins to take part in a new study on the psychology of presentations. All you have to do is click here, and feel free to encourage friends and family. Many thanks.
Second, here is an amazing illusion by Akiyoshi Kitaoka. The background to the orange wave appears different to the background behind the purple wave, but both backgrounds are actually white!
Actually, I don’t see it.
All backgrounds are white for me.
Agreed. All looks the same to me however I look at it.
White background all the way for me, too.
Actually, if I look at it from further away, the background changes behind the orange wave.
Yes, one you mentioned it, I started seeing an orange background.
If I stare at it until my eyes start to lose focus I see a different color, but at first glance I only see white for both waves.
I guess people are viewing this on different monitor sizes. The background becomes white if I move my eyes closer to the screen.
Ditto.
Works for me. You might like to copy the image to Paint and zoom out for a better effect.
Or just hit CTRL plus “minus”.
I definitely see white and cream, but the eye’s adjustment to strong colours is well-known and seen often, so not sure I’d class this one as too shocking, sorry!
^ This.
I just see white backgrounds. And a little color leaking into regions i don’t focus directly
At first I saw pure white backgrounds until I fully read the post. After that it does appear to be shaded orange, but, in a way, I can still tell it is white.
I saw the cream between the orange right away.
I didn’t see the orange background until I read the description telling me I should be seeing a different color. Which is, itself, an interesting psychological experiment.
That actor in the study didn’t seem too confident, but I expect she would appeal to her own indigenous people.
Do it again and you’ll get different vids.
To get the best effect you need to step back and look from a distance
The background is anything but white due to the JPG file format. PNG would be a better choice to demonstrate this illusion.
I didn’t see any thing different in the color background until I saw the first few posts saying to step back and look so I put on my glasses and did see a light cream color background of the orange lines.
I didn’t see it immediately but the longer I looked the more creamy yellow the background behind the orange lines became! It’s true the further away you stand the deeper the yellow colour becomes!
Same here, both white. UNTIL I read your post and it said the backgrounds were different. Then I could see it.
Maybe this should be used as more of a suggestive piece rather than optical illusion?
http://danjswade.wordpress.com
How Bizarre!
It works for me no matter how hard I try for it to not.
It works for me – but only when I look at it wearing my reading glasses
Re: Match at 9.25am –
Richard, do you want us to take the experiment more than once?
First I looked at the picture and I saw two waves in front of a white background. Just after reading the text I saw the different colors…
I believe sometimes we see what we’re supposed to see.
First of all I thought it was going to be one of those ‘moving’ lines illusions but after reading the description I started to notice the colour oddity.
I saw it right away. Also realized the strength of the colors was the governing factor, so I didn’t think it was really amazing.
Yes I didn’t notice it until I read the description above.
Seeing it or not seeing it also seems to depend on the angle of gaze and/or the degree to which one’s eyes are focused on it.
Also: when tweeting blogposts, please tweet the URL of the blogpost itself, not the whole blog.
And I did your presentations experiment, but I thought it was flawed by the fact that the guy obviously didn’t care because it was a made-up company. Unless there’s another variant where there’s someone presenting a real company.
Both daughters only see a White background, son and myself can see an orange background.
First I saw the screen without reading the description and I saw it. But after I read it, its like they’re all plain white!
Interesting. When I first viewed this both backgrounds looked white, but after about ten seconds of viewing, the more orange background for the orange wave began to emerge.
don’t see it. I’ve tried different sizes, different distances… all white.
Impossible? ;D This is used in makeup all the time.
Erm, with regard to the psychology of presentations experiment – at least one of the questions needed a “does not compute” option. My answers were orthoganal to the available choices…
My son and me see cream between the orange waves but my wife see’s only white.
Interesting. However, to be convinced, I had to transform the color distribution. The backgrounds were NOT equal due to jpeg artifacts.
After reading the comments here, I wondered if the effect I’m seeing is due to the CRT nature of my monitor. Unlikely, because many of the illusions published by Richard has been effective only in TFT monitors… I guess Richard uses one of these. Even so, CRT’s scans the image in horizontal sweeps… could’t it be the effect if favored by the orientation of the image? I rotated it 90º. The illusion is preserved!
I can see cream color if i want to, but it gives me a headache
I didn’t notice the background at all until after I read it in the text.
I didn’t see any color difference there until I read the text to the article. Now I cannot stop seeing it!
It is easier to see the ‘different backrounds’ if the image is out of focus.
[...] very convincing. Look at this one for example, the orange lines really are on a white background. Impossible but true illusion Richard Wiseman's Blog Or these two identical pictures placed side by side which just refuse to look the same. Bloody [...]
Absolutely amazing for me.
I actually wondered if he was
lying, or if it was April again…
Good one!!!!
There is a perfectly logical scientific explanation for this to do with your retinas, and lazy eyes.
I just don’t know what it it is.
I just loaded this image into a photoshop to convince myself that this is really true… LOL
Nice illusion…
And it is!!