Today is Day 2 of working on the new book. To celebrate, here are three lovely ‘come forward – stand back’ illusions today…..
Do they work for you? Which is your favourite?
Today is Day 2 of working on the new book. To celebrate, here are three lovely ‘come forward – stand back’ illusions today…..
Do they work for you? Which is your favourite?
May 31, 2011 at 5:43 am |
I’m in a dolphin mood at the moment, so the last.is definitely my favourite
May 31, 2011 at 6:04 am |
Interesting. We tend to react very sensitively to faces, so there’s a lot of baggage there. I like the last one best.
I figure those images work (subject perception varies with distance) because at larger distance the details of the sharp overlays fall below our visual acuity.
BTW, color acuity is less than B/W acuity, which is why in analog TV (now obsolete) the chrominance bandwidth was smaller than the luminance bandwidth, and why kids’ coloring books work so well even when they are not filled in quite entirely accurately
June 1, 2011 at 3:27 pm
I went to school with a Michael Sternberg in Indiana (’68 – ’72). Any chance?
The second one because of the reversal of the angry/not angry faces. Took a lot of squinting to get it.
May 31, 2011 at 6:30 am |
Can’t get the first one on the left. Know the right hand one is cat close up but was expecting left one to be cat far away but it doesn’t change. Is it just me?
others are great.
June 8, 2011 at 9:55 pm
Same here – the girl looks just the same close up and far away. Other two very good.
May 31, 2011 at 6:32 am |
nice! thanks you for your sharing.
May 31, 2011 at 7:12 am |
For those who wear reading glasses just take them off to save the effort of moving backwards and forwards. If I’d realised this sooner I might not have run over the cat with my office chair.
May 31, 2011 at 8:22 pm
Thanks. That made them for me. I didn’t see the car until I read the filename before that.
May 31, 2011 at 7:16 am |
Instead of moving forward/backward… try squinting your eyes…
May 31, 2011 at 11:03 am
yea that worked for me
back and forward doesn’t work for me
May 31, 2011 at 7:44 am |
Excellent. I especially like the second one: the angry face is so surprising that I had to check again up-close to make sure I didn’t just confuse left from right.
May 31, 2011 at 8:09 am |
Second by far!
May 31, 2011 at 8:15 am |
I like how the guy’s expression changes and saw the dolphin turn into a car on a wet road ! But for me, the girl pics don’t do anything.
May 31, 2011 at 8:19 am |
First one doesn’t work for me either.
Love the second and third ones.
May 31, 2011 at 8:24 am |
#1 has the hardest job because it uses identical base images with a second layer on one of them, and is definitely the most subtle. (more on this later)
#2 i second Aviv’s double take, its almost shocking how much it changes; feels like a pure bred species of psych experiment visual straight from the lab.
#3 is a partial opacity overlay that works quite well but… well its just not as interesting as #1.
Taking a tip from the above comments i grayscaled the image and used a plastic layer from a laptop screen (deceased) that is invisible when in contact with the screen but rapidly fuzzes out when it moves away from the screen. It seems to break down like this:
view1 = close/left side happy/right side aggressive
view2 = further away/ls no change/rs feline detail blurred but eye shape changed to show ecstatic happiness, causing left side to appear threatening by contrast.
Slight of mind?
(to verify that no other change exists between right and left sides, view them as a stereo pair)
May 31, 2011 at 10:20 am |
Can anyone explain what you’re supposed to do, or see!?!
May 31, 2011 at 12:05 pm |
We are just killing time until the Friday puzzle by the look of things.
May 31, 2011 at 12:48 pm |
1) I’d say the girl doesn’t count. All that’s happened is someone’s mapped feint impressions of feline features onto the representation of her face in the photograph. Look at it either close up or far away and you see the girl.
2) This is one of the ‘classic’ examples of the technique. The apparent mood of the photographic subjects changes when viewed at a distance compared to when viewed close up, such that the one that appears calm when viewed ‘up close’ appears agressive when viewed far away, and vice versa.
3) The dolphin / car is definitely my favourite. It helps that it’s the easiest to form through unfocussing.
May 31, 2011 at 2:17 pm |
nice
May 31, 2011 at 3:30 pm |
these don’t really work for me…up close or far away
i) is a girl with and without her face paint
iii) is a sketchy dolphin and a fuzzy car
so that leaves ii) the old smiler/scowler as my fave by default
Are these type of effects better/worse with glaucoma and or cataracts?
May 31, 2011 at 5:59 pm |
#2 and #3 worked nicely.
May 31, 2011 at 6:22 pm |
I’d have enjoyed these if I didn’t first have to google “come forward- stand back illusion” and then figure out which of the many definitions applied in this case (No, it doesn’t seem to be a foreground/background thing, I don’t think it’s one of those magic eye pictures, Super Mario World doesn’t help…) Next time, please provide an explanation, or at least a link to one.
I finally gathered that the pictures are supposed to change when viewed close-up as opposed to far away. For me, #1 doesn’t change at all — even when the screen is so far across the room that I can’t make out the picture. #2 does exhibit a change of expression, and with #3 there’s a definite change.
However, both #2 and #3 are so blurry that it’s obvious they were created specifically to illustrate an illusion. Look at #3 in particular: It’s obviously two different pictures merged together…so is it really surprising that when we look at it, we see two different pictures?
I guess I just prefer illusions in which one thing looks like two things, rather than those in which two things look like two things.
Sorry. In general I really enjoy the illusions you post here, and I’ve amazed and delighted many friends by sharing them. Please keep up the excellent work.
May 31, 2011 at 8:51 pm |
I could only see the illusion when I got up and walked half way across the room. Dolphin was definitely the favorite in our household.
June 1, 2011 at 11:02 pm |
The third one: The dolphin and the car
June 1, 2011 at 11:04 pm |
No one mentions what I saw in #2. The left hand picture changes from a fuzzy male face to a clear female face.
June 2, 2011 at 1:02 am
The same for me.The angry male face changes into the female face of the right picture, only in lighter grey, while the female face seems to change into the angry male face from the left picture (but it stays quite blurry for me).
June 2, 2011 at 8:10 pm |
I think it has to do with the fact of being myope or long-sighted.
June 10, 2011 at 7:16 am |
I didn’t see a change in the first image.
The third image is fun. At close-up, one can already see the fuzzy car.
The second image is the most interesting and effective. I agree with some comments above: not only is there a total change, or exchange, of facial expression between the two images, but also a change in gender.
June 10, 2011 at 7:17 am |
I didn’t see a change in the first image.
The third image is fun. At close-up, one can already see the fuzzy car.
The second image is the most interesting and effective. I agree with some comments above: not only is there a total change, or exchange, of facial expression between the two images, but also an apparent change in gender.
January 3, 2012 at 10:55 am |
Cataracts…
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