Amazing Optical Illusion

Published on February 11th, 2007

Posted by Uncle Dave in General

Click pic to learn how A & B can both be the same shade of gray

16 users responded in " Amazing Optical Illusion "

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# 1 Smartalix said, on February 11th, 2007 at 3:06 pm

I love those tests that show us how fantastic our brains are. A favorite of mine is BIG SPANISH CASTLE.

# 2 John C Dvorak said, on February 11th, 2007 at 3:25 pm

i have seen this before and have always been convinced it is some sort of weird hoax. So I downloaded a universal eye-dropper that allows you to get the color values of everything on the screen.

Indeed the color values of those two boxes are identical.

# 3 Dested said, on February 11th, 2007 at 3:41 pm

Slow news day?

# 4 JFStan said, on February 11th, 2007 at 3:42 pm

This is one of my favourites, as it is so unbelievable when just looking at it. It definitely FWYH.

# 5 Uncle Dave said, on February 11th, 2007 at 3:59 pm

#3: Very funny! While we often get people criticizing us for posting too many news-related stories, you come along and criticize us for not enough. Guess we’re doing things right!

# 6 John C Dvorak said, on February 11th, 2007 at 4:08 pm

It’s Sunday — that means features!!!

# 7 Mark Derail said, on February 11th, 2007 at 4:19 pm

Then run this story! http://tinyurl.com/33t2s7
Software patch could boost MPG in gas-powered vehicles

# 8 shaine mata said, on February 11th, 2007 at 7:00 pm

If you stare at B for a little bit, the colors of A and B look the same. It goes away if shift your gaze.

# 9 Greg Allen said, on February 11th, 2007 at 8:21 pm

Wow, that optical illusion is absolutely fantastic.

I’m trained and experienced in color matching and it still threw me off.

# 10 ECA said, on February 11th, 2007 at 9:14 pm

WRONG, its a fake…look at the shading on the BARS….
someone didnt turn shading OFF.

# 11 Gizmola said, on February 11th, 2007 at 10:38 pm

I didn’t believe it either till i fired up pixie and checked the rgb values. For those of you who still aren’t convinced (although the article explains why our brain is designed to deceive us and that this is a good thing) pixie is a great free little windows only (sorry mac folks) app that pops up a window and dropper that you can put over both of the boxes to measure the color values.

Pixie here -> http://www.nattyware.com

# 12 David said, on February 11th, 2007 at 10:54 pm

Mac folks have a built-in utility called DigitalColor Meter that you can find under the Utilities folder.

# 13 andrewj said, on February 12th, 2007 at 5:50 am

All my tests in PS show it as being real. It might just take advantage of a weakness in PS which would be much less suprising than the illusion.

# 14 Jim Cotter said, on February 12th, 2007 at 5:57 am

True or Untrue. It doesn’t matter. What we *see* is true – I see two different shades so for me that is true, I couldn’t care less what others including the originator says it is.

In the real world that attitude works out just fine. Go around thinking is this true or untrue for about one hour and you’ll get nothing done.

# 15 Timbo said, on February 12th, 2007 at 8:27 am

My cataracted up left eye can’t see the “A” but can see the “B”.

But I made a card with two holes in it to hit the “A” square the the “B” square, and they are the same shade.

Our mental processing of vision is adding contrast and adjusting brightness, based upon what is surrounding the focal point of your interest. Probably, if you dilated your iris, you could see through the trick.

# 16 RonD said, on February 12th, 2007 at 2:07 pm

I agree square B is the same color as square A. But they had to “cheat” to make it so. Square A in not in the shadow of the cylinder. Square B is in the shadow. So square B should be darker than A due to the shadow (like the four dark squares around B that are also in the shadow). But B is not darker. I think that’s cheating. Still it is a neat illusion.

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