By Vurdlak on July 31, 2006, with 88 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.”
(13 votes)
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?
Actually, the white is either the same shade of grey, or a slightly lighter shade, than the black… in the second photo with the background taken out, they altered the color to make the word white darker than it was in the original…
The streak on the picture is the same color as “white”!