Neon Color Spreading Illusion

Concentrate on the left image, where you can see four circles with quarter of their constructional lines painted blue. If you blur your eyes a little, you should perceive a faint bluish color within the square region. As you presumed, it’s only an illusion – the square region is completely white. To prove this, let us move to the next image on the right. When additional small circles are placed at the edges of the illusory square, the neon color spreading disappears. Now how is that for an illusion! For more simmilar illusions, you can open the section of this site, called Color Adapting category.

bluish circles optical illusion

22 Replies to “Neon Color Spreading Illusion”

  1. WOW I can see a definitive line where the blue square ends.

    Usually in illusions like these when you stare they go away and u don’t get a precise line

  2. When I look at the right hand image with the small circles, the neon effect far from disappears! Not only do I perceive the same ‘overlay’ effect with the brightening in the middle where there is none, I also perceive that the corners are much ‘brighter’ with the effect radiating out just past the edge of the outermost large circle, but not quite as far as the central region.

  3. There is a stereo-gram effect which I assume is unintended:
    2 new,larger concentric circles appear in the background, between The 2 original groups of 4 concentric circles which occupy the middle ground. (the new circles are not actually larger, but because they are they same size and appear in the background, they give the Illusion of being larger)

    The 24 small green circles forming a square become 42 in 2 adjacent squares sharing a side, forming a horizontal rectangle. These occupy the foreground in front of the 2 new circles and the 4 original circles on the right.

  4. Sorry but the illusion does not go away with either picture. I understand the squares are both white in both pictures but they look blue in BOTH pictures as well

  5. FAKE! I proved using pixel map that there is in fact a bluish gray glow color offset, while parts of the centers are indeed white.

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