This is an oldie, but we rarely see this kind of optical illusions in its full effect. Ok, this is what I want you to do: count how many different colors you can see in this spiral below. Unfortunately color-blind individuals will only see a grayish pattern, so this won’t work for them (those of you can remain occupied reading this article). Rest of you, be sure first to notice that there are two different shades of pink, and then you may start counting. Most of us will end up with 4 different colors (2 pinkish ones, blue and a green). Well this was the wrong answer! Yes, you heard me right. There are actually only 3 colors present here. To see what I mean, check the second picture. It shows you how this image would look like if we removed those pinkish colors in background. Amazing, isn’t it? You may recall candy stripes we posted waaay back. It’s almost the same!
How Many Colors Are There?
This is the same picture, with pink shades removed.
(14 votes)
Loading ...
your wrong, i did it, there orange green and pink, did none of you question the answer?
i saw a better one at work, the nature museum, with birds it looks like 4 colours but is 2, orange and yellow, but it goes with 3 bands across the bird and the background colour, repeated four different ways, asking which are teh same with letters a, b, c, d, e, f. i couldnt find a copy online….
For those using “Count Colors” in a paint program.. yes, there are 4 colors in the palate, but only 3 of them are used. Black is the first color in the palate, but do you see blank in the image? nooooooo
This is a really aggravating illusion. Having looked at it for a while, I’ve realised the colour misperception is, in part, due to the way they are displayed on an LCD screen. Copy the image, go into paint, draw 2 boxes at the top of the screen and fill one of them with the ‘blue’ colour, and one of them with the ‘green’ colour. Now select one of the boxes and drag it to the bottom of the screen. Notice how it ‘changes colour’ (to become more blue)? Now move your head down and it ‘becomes green again’. I believe the various software used to measure the colours do so in different ways and therefore that’s why there are sometimes 3 colours and at other times 4.
Um, I see orange, green, blue, and pink.. I don’t understand. S:
OMG THERE IS NO BLUE!!! xDDD
I don’t understand. Really, I’m at loss here. I see 4 colors on the first picture, as everyone does, apparently. Pink, orange, blue and green. And I really don’t understand what to make of the “solution” picture. There’s only two colors there, black and green, and both colors are nowhere near the colors in the first picture.
So… whatthef?
I copy-pasted the first picture to paint and compared the blue and green, only then I believed it was the same colour. I know it’s true but I still can’t see it, its amazing!
Unbelievable, I had to enlarge the picture a lot to start seeing that the blue color is actually green.
This one makes no sense, I saw 4 colours, blue, orange, pink and green, the answer is 3 but on the second pic I only see black and green, and black isn’t in the original? so its just green?
I think the solution needs better explaining
Or I’m just missing something ^_^
there is only fushia, orange and green (of a minty shade). I checked with Paint.
The “solution” is somewhat misleading. It looks like the “orange” stripes have the same colour as the “red” spiral (which makes no sense because we can distinguish them). It took me some while to realise that the author was meaning that the green and blue colour are actually the same…
Amazing. Has no one else noticed the single black pixel in the centre of the picture? There ARE 4 COLOURS – both in the palette AND ACTUALLY USED in the image. The 4 colours used (including the proper colour names) are Black, Magenta, Orange and Sea Green.
For the people who still don’t see it,
THERE IS NO BLUE!
The green and the ‘blue’ band are actually the same color.
Maybe I’ve found the matter.
The second picture solution is confusing, forget it.
The green/blue illusion happens due to the different stripes that crosses the band.
In the “blue” one, it is crossed by pink stripes; in the “green” one, it is crossed by orange stripes.
I guess that since the stripes are very small, the brain mixes the colors with different results. With bigger stripes this should not happen.
For those seeing 4 colors and not understanding the solution picture, think of it this way; the orange and pink are in fact, not the colors in question. Only the green and blue. If you take the orange and pink out and replace them with black, the solution image is the result. Blue and green aren’t really in there at all. It’s more Sea Green-ish. One spiral mixes with orange to make it seem lighter (green), and the other spiral mixes with pink to make it seem darker (blue). It’s the same effect as all the other color illusions on this site.
omg thats so cool the green + blue r the same colour!!!
the description was rubbish but i got it thanks to all the comments especially andy’s comment about paint that helped thanks
for people who still dont understand the solution, the solution is the same image with black in place of the pink and orange, so you see that blue and green are the same colour. if u go on any program that can compare colors, (better if it gives the codes of the colors) you can see that in the first pic you have only three colors: the pink, the orange (which vurdlak describes as another shade of pink) and the green.
I only see pink, orange, green, and blue. Aaron has a point though.
Amazing… I actually had to copy the image into MS Paint and use the colour picker tool to paint the ‘green’ and ‘blue’ colours next to each other, before I believed they were the same colour.
^^Ps. Excuse the Australian spelling of “Colour”
Try zooming in… The illusion shall slowly loose it’s effect :D
That’s incredible!
I used the color picker in my browser dev-tools plugin, and they are exactly the same color value. #00FF97
you can try opening the picture alone in a window of you browser.. now zoom in really far. then it becomes apparent that the blue is in fact the same colour as the green. this illusion works really well!
Dude, get over it. It’s 3 colours. Don’t be a wise ass, seriously.
I thought that you were talking about the Pink and Orange (yes I am using capitals) when you spoke about the ‘two colours’ being the same; I was so confused for so long (sooo long, sooo long) but then
IT ALL MADE SENSE.
It was so awesome.
Heh-heh! I wasn’t going for that either, until I looked at it close up. It does make you giggle when you realise that there is no blue.
Its interesting, that all 3 colors have the same saturation. I don’t know if it is a condition for what happens in our brains. But the amazing thing is, that you make this color mix effect physical. Just take the picture, convert it to RGB color mode and scale it to a quarter with interpolation. Many pixel turn into a blue tone. And this is not an illusion. ;) Maybe our brains do not have the resolution and interpolate the colored lines the same way.
cool
Are you guys idiot? What you can’t understand? The 2 tones of pink make the green look like an orange and blue on the first picture, but it is all green and pink after all.
Freaky… i only realised that the blue and the green is the same color cuz I checked it with paint. It’s true and it’s really confusing…
its true!!
heres some proof :
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g104/Sazzelz/spiral.jpg
There IS black in the picture. One Pixel, dead center. So… four colors. ;)
Our eyes see certain colors differently depending on which colors they’re next to. When the blueish-greenish color is striped with the pink, it looks blue; when its striped with the orange, it looks green.
It has nothing to do with the way LCD monitors display things. In fact, the same phenomenon explains why the person who suggested it saw it become more green or more blue depending on the background. His eyes were seeing it differently based on what was around it.
It didn’t help, however, that the person who wrote the initial description described ‘two pinkish colors’ when the rest of us seem to be seeing one pink and one orange.
Okay, I get it now. Thanks.
Actually, I understood the explanation (or people’s comments) that the blue and the green is actually the same color. I just gotten confused by the “explanation” picture. Why on earth did it become black? It turned out to be an emphasis that the green and the blue was the same color.
Okay, now I have another problem. I opened both pictures in Photoshop. Color picked the blue and the green in the first picture and confirmed that it is indeed ONE color. Color #00FF96 with RGB component of 0R, 255G and 150B.
Next, I color picked the second picture. The explanation picture. In my eyes, the color in the toolbar didn’t seem to change. It was the same color as the first picture. But when I opened the color picker menu, that same color was said to be color #04FE94 with RGB component of 4R, 254G and 148B.
How could this be? I swear I didn’t see any change in the color when I color picked it.
All in all… amazing illusion! You can’t force yourself (your eyes) to acknowledge that it was the same color, EVEN when you know for a fact that it was. You still see it as blue and green. CRAB! Great one this one, Vurdlak!
After Chris said there’s a single solitary black pixel in the middle, I decided to crop the image to a spiral and indeed XnView shows 3 colors.
Good catch Chris.
how does it work?
At first i was like wtf it’s clearly 4. I thought that he meant pink and orange are the same which clearly wasn’t. This is awesome. Even knowing how it works you can’t force yourself to think that green and blue are the same
There are four colors in the top one. (Orange, purple, blue, and green.)
Proved. For evidence, check this.
http://i703.photobucket.com/albums/ww38/kqp/colors.jpg
I uploaded it into photoshop & the color tool picked up 4 colors.
you see, orange is the oposite of blue makeing the stripe look more green, red (or pink) is the oposite of green which makes the stripe look more blue, the diference makes the two look like different colours (im not british i just like spelling color like that) its very cool though, one of the best illusions on here
i actually saw pink,orange,green and blue….too sad i didn’t get it :(
ooh there is no blue! the blue is green indeed! :]
Okay people, this is what it is. yes it’s 3 colours because the pink lines MIX with the black and green, which forms those colours. That is why it’s 3 colours. you need the PINK stripes to form that. So you could say it’s mixed colours.
i didn’t have to look at the second picture, as soon as you said that there are only 3 colours i saw the illusion