This optical illusion makes you see colors in black and white photos
Jul 31, 2019
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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Artist and “a digital media toolsmith” Øyvind Kolås has recently published a visual experiment that took the internet by storm. He created a simple, but effective optical illusion which messes with your brain, making you see a color image when it’s actually black and white.
In Øyvind’s experiment, an over-saturated colored grid is overlaying a grayscale image to cause color assimilation. Also known as Von Bezold spreading effect, in this phenomenon the perceived color of a region shifts toward the color of the neighboring region. In other words, the colored lines make us see colors in the areas of the photo which are actually black and white. It’s like colorization, only in real-time, with our mind. Pretty cool.
Other than using a grid, Øyvind also experimented with lines. I’d say that it’s equally effective:
Another one, with horizontal lines instead of a grid. pic.twitter.com/sNKSBBkkqT
— ̐?ṕ̒ͪͬͯ̐̐̐̐̐̚ȉ̓̈̅̄̓̀p͒̍̚p̏͗̊̔͒̐̐í͆͆̓ͮ̔ͮ͆n̒͐̀͆ (@hodefoting) July 25, 2019
In addition to photos, the illusion also works for video, and here’s a demo:
If you want to experiment with the illusion, Øyvind has added an operation to GEGL, and you can also head over to Patreon and support his work.
[via My Modern Met]
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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9 responses to “This optical illusion makes you see colors in black and white photos”
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If you squint, the effect is even more pronounced.
Question: isn’t this the principle of a Bayer filter applied to sensors? After all, sensors are in b&w, and they use bayer filters to bring back colour.
Who knew adding color to black and white photos would make them colored!?
Love this experiment…especially like the video. The colored lines definitely make it seem like a colored image. Really cool illusion…thanks for sharing!
That’s because there is actually color inside these ” black and white” photos.
I’m looking at this with a giant monitor and it doesn’t work?
Thats how black and white looks like.
the grid has different colors so its just coloring the photos with some gaps..