An optical illusion featuring four coloured balls has left people scratching their heads as some claim it has led them to question their very existence – what do you make of it?
Optical illusions are visual images that trick our brains into seeing something, or perceiving something differently than it is in reality.
They are a great way to keep your mind sharp and focus on attention to detail. For example, a picture might appear to be one thing at first glance but, on closer inspection, turns out to be something else.
While some brainteasers make us second guess ourselves, others are as simple as using a different colour — remember the viral dress that confused everyone as to whether it was white and gold or black and blue? It’s incredible how easily our vision can be warped by the mere action of substituting colours.
READ MORE: Just one in 10 people can find the hidden pea in this ‘fiendish’ optical illusion
This latest optical illusion has left people questioning their sanity and declaring it to be fake. Posted on Reddit, the image was captioned: “The 4 balls are of the same color.” However, at first glance, the four balls in question do not look the same colour. One is pink, one is blue, another is purple and the other is silver.
Each is set on a different coloured background with a different colour completely in small spots over the top. People looking at the image were confounded with many arguing that the image was false.
One user wrote: “My brain is NOT liking this.” Another person added: “Am I insane? They’re different colors. Someone tell me.” Someone else revealed they even had proof the balls were different colours. They wrote: “Used a color picker to select the hex values for each sphere and got different results each time.”
The naysayers and the believers quickly became locked in an argument, with one person writing: “People saying they used color pickers didn’t use them on the exact same part of the ball/this image is too low res to reliably select a single pixel and get accurate results. These are definitely the same color. It’s clear to see when you zoom in they are all the same purple-ish hue. Finally an illusion so good people actually think it’s a lie.”
However, one clever person explained why our brains see different colours. They wrote: “Yes they are the same color. It’s called the ‘Bezold effect’ after the German professor of meteorology who described this illusion.
“It works because of the spatial and luminary relationship between the colors. Purple is made of red and blue, if you put a patch of purple on a field of blue, the red inside of the patch contrasts with the blue of the field making it stand out. If you put the same purple on a field of red then the blue in the patch is more easily recognized by your eye/brain. Put both setups next to each other and the same purple will look drastically different.”
The Bezold effect, named after Wilhelm von Bezold, occurs when a colour is altered in appearance by the presence of surrounding colours. For example, a yellow box adjacent to a blue one will appear darker than a yellow box next to a red one to the human eye.
The astonishing image caused some Reddit users to have an existential crisis, with one person writing: “I am thinking a lot lately about ‘is the red I see the same one you see’ but it is becoming clearer that the red I see isn’t even the red I see.”
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