One photo of a dress split the internet over what color it was

In February 2015, a blurry photo of a striped dress went viral because people couldn't agree whether it was blue-and-black or white-and-gold. Vision scientists traced the split to how each viewer's brain unconsciously guesses the lighting in the photo and 'corrects' the colors accordingly. The debate ended up in peer-reviewed journals as a rare real-world case study in color constancy.

— Pascal Wallisch, Illumination assumptions account for individual differences in the perceived colour of dress #TheDress — Journal of Vision, 2017

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