Trick your brain: black and white photo turns to colour! - Colour: The Spectrum of Science - BBC

#bbc

[HappyCow]

Even though it was one for like a split second it was awesome!

[.V.]

it was coloured for like 1 or 2 seconds then it went to black and white . 4 me

[atwgirl]

Same thing happens when you stare at a red piece of paper for 30 seconds and then stare at a white wall you will see a green piece of paper projected on the wall. It is a function of your brain to search for complimentary colours (colours opposite each other on a simple 6 tone colour wheel) and if they are not there our brain creates them for us. Your brain automatically feels more comfortable seeing red apples in green trees. and the colours purple and yellow, and the colours blue and orange. Colour psychology is so interesting.

[courtneylewis]

shes wearing that god awful black and blue dress

[MargaritaZhigarina]

*turns down volume and checks the ending just in case*

[JamesWelbes]

This video would have been way cooler if you just showed the picture the whole time and stopped showing us the women looking at the picture

[Silveretta]

I can't be the only one waiting for a jump scare to pop up.

This is YouTube after all...

[marcusf]

It worked the first time. I then tried it over and over as I was skeptical and because I wasn't letting the light in, I saw it as black and white all the time. When I did concentrate on the dot throughout once again, when you move your eyes away from where the blue dot was, it goes black and white, and if you move back to the centre (where the blue dot would have been) you see the colour again (if you do it in the 2 or 3 second window you have before it is seen for what it really is).

[topsui]

Pause the video then alternate between the keys 5 and 6 on the keyboard, looks much better

[BRAWGWill]

So this is what you need to do when watching 60s Doctor Who!


...with a few complications.

[ArchEvil]

Fun fact: it also works when using just one eye! I closed my left eye while staring at the center dot, then when the black and white image popped up, it looked as if it were in colour. I closed my right eye and opened my left eye: black and white image. I closed my left eye again and opened my right eye again: still colour! And so on. The effect remained for about 3-4 seconds. Try it yourself!

[noobkosh]

0:04 she's wearing the blue and black/ white and gold dress

[BollocksUtwat]

Pretty nice demonstration of how our perception of reality is tenuous at best.

[HanbinGo]

This is just a simple mechanism called Opponent- Process Theory developed in the 1870s, it is the idea of perceiving colour in terms of paired opposites such as red with green, and yellow with blue. A possible mechanism for the theory is that bipolar cells are excited by one set of wavelengths and inhibited by other. Which are attached to the cone retinal receptors. But this theory has the limitations of color constancy & retinex theory.

[mahak]

ironic how she's wearing the black and blue/ gold and white dress

[BenRangel]

This is just about "eye delay". It shows the optical phenomenon that focusing on an image long enough will make it "stick to your retina" for a few seconds.
Like the experiments where you focus on a Spiral for 1 minute and then you'll se a spiral as an overlay on the next image you see.
It's the same thing here - staring at colors makes them appear as an overlay on the next image you see, for about 2 seconds.

[chinesemimi]

0:51 saw it in color without staring at the dot B-)

[Seebbbs]

It's cool because each time you blink it gets a bit more black and white

[Tedybare]

Eye is being temporarily "wearing out" the colour receptor. When true b&w pic appears, you see the opposite colour. Grass in odd colour pic purple so it then becomes green ( the opposite colour.

[Metaphany]

it lasted for 7 seconds then i only saw the middle in color