July 31, 2006 by Vurdlak with 86 Comments
This is so wonderfull illusion! It was sent to me by one of our fans called Mike. Believe it or not, the “white” letters are actually darker than the “black” letters. This effect becomes clear when the surroundings are removed. You can jump inside this article to see the proof! This is what Mike wrote: “Found this magazine, Scientific American Mind, which had a good article about visual perception. Lots more in the June/July issue.”
(10 votes)
it really does work
i opened it in photshop and paint and used the color tool that tells you the color of the pixel that you click
white is a big difference from black
(I tried posting already, but don’t know if it went through).
They’re actually both the same, if you take it from the perspective of shapes rather than words. The word “BLACK” is standing up, whereas “WHITE” is lying down. The top edge of “BLACK” matches the face of “WHITE”, and likewise the face of “BLACK” matches the bottom edge of “WHITE”, which corresponds to how they’re laying against the background.
This is real. Even if the two images are slightly different, I’ve tested this illusion before with the photoshop eyedropper right on the original images.
I have to disagree with steelcitykid, if you grab the original file and cut the words out and place them next to eachother you will see that the WHITE is Darker than the BLACK.Very Cooool Illusion.
THIS IS COOL MY EYES WERE GOING ALL FUNNY
Don’t know how you lot are doing it, but the white letters are way darker than the black in Photoshop.
I checked with photoshop and MS paint. In photoshop, I dragged the “white” without the background next to the other one. They are the same.
awesome – strange how your mind plays tricks on you
I think that it was obvious that the white was darker than black, if it wasn’t, then it wouldn’t be an optical illusion and wouldn’t be on this great site.
on photoshop, because of the pixels, we will get a different outcome compared to our eyes.. because white is lying back down, which makes it darker, doesnt mean it’s really dark. ALONG with the dark shadow, made it look black, so in photoshop, it captures the ‘dark’ colors and display it out on a white canvas, showing ‘white’ to be darker than ‘black’…. my opinion is they are the same :)
The illusion is based on the disparity between a 2-dimensional interpretation of the image and a 3-dimensional one. Your mind isn’t really playing tricks on you. Your mind is inferring the “color” of the blocks through experience. You know that white things appear darker at night. Think of walking through your house in the dark. Your mind assumes that color is constant (your sofa didn’t change colors when the lights went out). But the contrast changed because of the amount of light being reflected back to your eyes. But in your mind, you still “see” the original color of the objects.
I can’t believe that the white is darker. This is amazing!
The front of the white letters are indeed darker than the front of the black letters
You guys! This is NOT an illusion!
Get photoshop, put the word WHITE without the background ON the word white WITH the background, it is darker! Meaning the image was altered.
# Jinesh Jain on 8:30 AM
This is not true. The word “white” in the two images are not of the same color. This has nothing to do with perception. I suggest you take this illusion [sic] out.
…word.
“White” is indeed darker than “black”
r_berto
PowerChild
[M]ilt
sentin3l
are right!
Read there explanations or try it for yourselfs.
Still don’t believe it.. use your hand to hid the background over the monitor. ;)
One of the best ones i saw.
100% true. save pic. open in paint. zoom to large size. slide the pieces around. i’ve seen this before.. with the green cylinder and the checker boards… that also, is 100% true.
black and white are not colour dummies. neat illusion tho’.
Nice illusion.. but I liked the checkerboard version better..
WTC? :(-
kOoL
that really tricked my eyes
wow steelcitykid, you have a life
You’ve done this one before :(.
lol i agree with JJ on this one…. steelcitykid thats pretty pathetic
Very easy to tell that the white is darker because of the light that is shining on the black.
Very Cool,
Tony The Tiger
Hey, “whatever”, stop being so negative, this a great site! And its “illusion”
Great illusion! :)
OMG i cnt belive that the white is actually darker!!!!!!!!!!!!!………yea i can, get over it evry1 n get a life
if you have photoshop or even paint, use the turkey baster thing and white is darker than black and steelcitykid eventhough the two whites arnt the same the white is still darker.
i
Hey Max and Steelcitykid,
Sorry to say, you are mistaken. The picture is real.
I checked the shading out with my SnagIt editor and I used the Freehand selection tool to cut a fragment out of the letters. When you select part the “E” form the “WHITE” letters and move it around you will see that (1) the “WHITE” letters are darker than the “BLACK” letters, and (2) the shading of the letters in the first and second picture is identical. Don’t trust a printer for this kind of comparison.
I don’t need photoshop to see that the color of the word ‘white’ is darker than the color of the word ‘black’. It’s pretty obvious.
zzzzzzzzzzzz…huh…oh…BORING!!!!!!!!!
‘d shadow,,isn’t?
I copied into ‘Paint’, then used the sampler dropper to grab the ‘black’ colour first, drew an outline and filled it, then did the same for the ‘white’ colour, and there’s no doubt, the ‘white’ colour is very much the darker of the two
Does it really come to that much of a surprise that something will be brighter if you are shining a source of light on it compared to something you are not shining a source of light on?