Dominant Color Illusion

Arrows Dominant Color IllusionsHere’s a simple one. I know you aren’t fond of them, but we have to feature them occasionally as well (it’s cause of our goal – biggest optical illusion database, remember?) Anyway, what do you see in this picture on your right? There are bunch of arrows, right? But what is so strange, is that people only notice certain colored arrows at first. This probably explains which of these two is your dominant color. I’ve noticed green arrows pointing to the right, but only after a while I’ve seen the yellow arrows pointing in opposite direction. How about you?

FYI: There are bunch of new fans pouring to our site lately. Many of them arrived via our Facebook fan-page. If you’ve missed it, be sure to join and see new illusions before they get published on our site. I use the group for submissions as well! We are very close to 3,000 fans (which is insignificant number, compared to millions who downloaded our “Optical Illusion of The Daywidget). Be sure to become our fan on Facebook, or check our widgets if you’re new! Old-timers still get a chance to rethink their widget choice (I recommend Windows sidebar gadget!)

153 Replies to “Dominant Color Illusion”

  1. I saw the yellow arrows first. Does anyone know if this has any particular significance, or it’s just to do with yellow being my dominant colour?

  2. I noticed the yellow arrows first. (:

    I discovered this site via your widget. I downloaded the widget for my dashboard on my Apple MacBook. And how glad I am I stumbled across you! I LOVE looking at the different illusions you post everyday. Thanks for keeping me entertained :)

  3. Yellow arrows first for me as well on the Windows sidebar gadget. When I opened the web page I just saw both and kept flipping between the two and was heading for a headache, so scrolled down quickly :)

  4. I noticed the yellow arrows first, and after focusing on the head of the arrow of the green one, was able to see the green arrows.

    Is there something wired in my mind that is different than yours or is it just by chance that I see yellow first and you see green first?

  5. Wow… i think i saw yellow then green then yellow then green…it was all happening so quickly i thought i was in Oz . very interesting!!

  6. I think there are more yellow arrows than green ones in the picture, maybe this can influence the perception of the viewers about the dominant color…

  7. im sure y’all dont seem suprised when i say GREEN is my dominant colour,,,im guessin its bcause i smoke so much green,,,,,,,, XD

  8. Yellow first, but after you notice the green arrows its kinda hard to concentrate in only one color!
    Bizarre!

  9. I guess I don’t have a dominant color or , perhaps because I build I tend to see a line drawing as a whole

  10. I saw the green one first. Well I think it depends on what color you’re focussing on.
    For instance if you focus on the green, you’d see green arrows first.

  11. I saw the yellow ones first, esp in the widget. Once I read the notes, I glanced back and immediatly saw the green ones.

    It seems, if I look at the left side of the pic, the yellow ones stand out more and if I look at the right side of the pic the green ones seem to stand out more (or at least better).

    I wonder if that has anything to do with type of text we normally read. Us westerners read left to right, while languages may be right-to-left. It may be as subtle as which side of the image you normally see first that makes one or the other stand out better.

  12. Yellow first on the small image. But when looking at a bigger image you can see both.

    Also depends with one is cut off near the edge of the image.

  13. I saw green first – then, again, I’m a right handed person – & math science rather than history & literature. Any connection?

  14. yeah i saw the yellow ones first then was like O SHI! GREEN ONES TOO! hahah… wand then i tried hard and could just see the green ones mainly! but yeah anyway whats the significance of seeing the yellow ones first does nayone know? maybe something to do with which part of the brain is dominant or? just which colour you ‘prefer’ or ‘see more/more of’? … or your monitor? lol xD

  15. yellow first, but I can switch between them easily unlike yesterday’s cat that I have to concentrate to get it to switch :)

  16. I like these simple illusions. They do not necessarily demand a lot of tine, and that is sometimes great. And if every illusion was a BIG illusion, with many pictures, videos and so forth, the big ones would not stand out!
    It cannot be christmas every day ;)

    Saw the yellow one first. Why is that?

  17. i think i should tell you i have noticed a problem with the windows sidebar gadget
    when a animated picture is showed (like the spinning cat) the gadget seems to piled the animation frames on top of each other instead of replacing the last one so you get a kind of ghost of previous frames where as on the website you dont.

  18. i suppose the majority would see yellow first as a yellow arrow is in the centre of the picture and most people with centre their eyes to the centre of a picture before moving to interesting points or scanning closer

  19. Oh My God! This one plays games with my head! My head kept lea[ing back and forth between green and yellow! Oh I think I am gonna have a headache (but a good one if that makes sense!?) Thanks for feeding my illusion addiction…love ya!

  20. I noticed the yellow pointing left arrows first, then about 20 seconds I noticed the right arrows.

    I swore they were switching back and forth then I realized it wasn’t.

    I like this simple illusion. Like to see more.

  21. It was yellow first for me as well. Quickly saw the green ones when I opened the web site. I found you, as a gadget for iGoogle Home Page. Enjoy checking out the illusions.

  22. noticed green first when it was minutized as soon as it got enlarged then noticed the yellow being more dominant

  23. I wonder if the color you see first is because they are (or are NOT) pointed in the direction of your dominant hand. Or maybe on the right/left brain types. I am a right-handed, logic minded (read non-artistic) person and I saw the right-pointing arrows first. (green) But the yellow arrows were immediately behind them. Now I can’t choose anymore. It’s like the spinning cat/man/lady illusions. I can make them spin either direction at will now.

  24. Ive always thought my eyes saw slightly different shades – this explains it; I saw yellow (arrows) on the left and green on the right – meaning my left eye is more sensitive to cooler shades and visaversa for the right… wicked

  25. Yellow first and I’m red-green color blind (Cant distinguish some shades of brown look dark green)

  26. green arrows. But I think that’s just because my eyes happened to land on a green arrow. If I look at the yellow areas, I see yellow arrows. If I look at the green areas, I see green arrows. So, I think I’m ambiguous. :)

  27. The yellow arrows came first for me, but I can switch to either really quite easily.
    I don’t think either is my dominant colour.

  28. Yellow first.

    I wonder if the first color noticed “means” anything, or is correlated with something else that can be measured, such as handedness, gender, occupation. I don’t even know what to consider correlating it with. But I still wonder if there is some significance to the first color seen??

  29. I saw the yellow arrows first and have to go a bit scally eyed to see the green ones.
    Do you think it has more to do with your direction dominance rather than colour dominance?
    I am a lefty and i saw the arrows pointing left first.

  30. All our lives we are trained to pick up dark patterns on light background. Be it the text in a book, a picture we drew in our notebook, most webpages etc…

    So I think it is natural that the eye first sees green arrows on a yellow background. Even after you’ve seen the yellow arrows, it is still more comfortable to think of it as green arrows.

    Other kinds of illusions are closely related to that.

  31. Green first. Since I am red-blind that means that I have a slightly better green vision.

    When reading the text, the image started blinking like ****. Not sure what that says about my perferred colour.

  32. noticed both first, strange as it seems. but if you focus on one specific arrow, you can see both colored arrows

  33. Mosques are full of similar patterns and more complicated ones. The Alambra in Spain is well worth alook. Not quite sure of the spelling.

  34. When I saw the picture on the Windows 7 gadget, I saw the yellow arrows. When I opened the picture with Google Chrome and saw it full-sized, I saw the green arrows.

    I guess when we see a large picture, we tend to see the darker parts and when we see a small picture, we tend to see the brighter parts.

  35. I can stare at it and switch it as I please, it almost feels like a strobe light flashing at me. Pretty cool

  36. I think it’s more probable to see yellow arrows first because all are complete green ones are split by the half in the first and the last row of arrows. If you start to look the image from the beginning is easier to imagine a whole arrow than half an arrow.

  37. i saw the yellow one first..though

    @Mr.moderator..its good you published this post,we get to learn some simple scientific/anatomical facts because of it.keep up the good work

  38. I also noticed yellow first. Even though I also saw the green in the background, I focused first on yellow.

  39. I saw green first, but it took me maybe a second to see yellow and after that they continued to flash rather annoyingly back and forth…

  40. i saw yellow first and then my bro says look at the green arrows and then i see the green ones

  41. you all stew o pit if you don’t now you have to see yellow first if you awesome to bad you noobs you bored that why you looking at this i here to make fun of you noobs and loser who are nerds and droks so go get your galsses and do the nerd dance that what nerds and dorks do after they get insulted to show they care but they won’t do anything the steps are first you go outside and scream i am a NERD! then ypou make a everyone laugh at you so die now in shame an embrass ment to bad. you all smelly nerd and dorks

  42. Kinda wierd that i saw on the left hand side the arrows pointing right and on the right hand side i saw the arrows pointing left. however i cant reproduce the effect

  43. I saw the green ones first! (The first time I saw this illusion. I’ve seen it before. I saw green, then after 12 seconds I saw yellow.

  44. lol i saw the green ones first, but noticed the yellow ones too b4 i looked close on the pic. But after seeing the green arrows i saw the yellow ones after like half a sec, lmao. So easy ;)

  45. For me, it depends on the angle that I’m looking at it to see the arrows of each color…

  46. I noticed the yellow arrows first and only after a few seconds of straining my eyes did I noticed the green ones.

  47. To be completely honest I noticed both at the same time. I have never seen that particular illusion before so it wasn’t cheating…it just runs in the family with the ADD and all that shiz.

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