There’s debate on whether the following is real or not. It’s part of a series of similar effects on YouTube. Why you would go to all the effort of faking an optical illusion is probably my question – however it may be a clever trick of the light. I’ll let you decide.
Optical illusion fakery
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(34 Responses)
It’s a well known colour trick; the ones at the top look darker because they’re set against white. Paste a screen grab into Photoshop and move the diamonds on the page, and you’ll see that all they’re all the same gradiated colour. Fooled me for a minute though, hence the Photoshop double-checking!
I say real because the diamond are actually different colours they get darker down from the top point to the bottom point if you look properly.
Think you’ll find that all the diamonds are the same colour and that they are lighter at the top than the bottom.
All diamonds are shaded lighter on the top and darker on the bottom, so when they’re put in that pattern, they look like the lower rows are brighter, when they’re all actually the same
i’ve seen the effect before, on a static image, i loaded the image up into photoshop and tested each of the colours, they’re all the same. the image is on wikipedia somewhere, with a grid and a cylinder on it
I don’t know if it was just my connection going wonky on me…but I am sure I saw a couple of …jumps. A little slicing and dicing maybe? :hm:
I think that’s real. The diamonds look like they fade from a darker grey at the bottom to a lighter grey at the top. The difference along the gradient is small and not very noticeable, however the sudden differences at the borders between two diamonds is noticeable.
This, I think, ties into the concept of ‘just noticeable differences’ in psychology.
It’s real. If you take a screenshot, open it up in paint and select the diamond shape you can move it around yourself and it fits in perfectly everywhere just like in the video.
Spoilsport alert!!
Pretty straightforward. All of the diamonds are the same colour, just shaded darker at the bottom which interestingly makes it look like the whole block is getting darker towards the top.
Simple confirmation is to take a screen shot of the video (PrtScn). Paste it into “Paint” and just us the cut tool to grab an area and move it around. It all matches up lovely.
I’d say that it’s for real. In a similar style, my favourite ‘shading’ optical illusion is this one:
http://www.popularscience.co.uk/features/feat16.htm
You can test the squares in PhotoShop, and see that they are the exact same colour.
It’s not fake. The diamonds are not a uniform colour; the top of each one is light brown, which fades into dark brown at the bottom. When you put lots of them together like in the video, the brain interprets them as diamonds of different shades of brown.
Yeah definitely real. Don’t listen to naysayers on YouTube!
Screen grab and photoshop solves that one.
It’s a real optical illusion. Other than the top and bottom rows of triangles the diamonds are the same shade.
The key is the vertical gradient on each of the diamonds (light at the top, darker at the bottom).
Same effect as this old one:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Grey_square_optical_illusion.PNG
A and B are actually the same…
I really don’t know, they certainly do look darker at the top compared to the bottom. But then I’m sure I’ve seen something similar to this before, cos that is where the illusion lies, they are in fact all the same shade. They certainly don’t look it to me here though……..
LC x
its a trick of the light i’ve seen this done tons of times with different shapes…
Real, if you printscreen this and go on paint or something similair you can test it for yourself! Pretty good one this though.
It’s probably real but I think we should put them to death just in case they’re a witch. Better to be safe than sorry.
@Rikard You’ve solved it in my opinion!
I covered my hand over the top half of the first row, and then did the same with the bottom row, squinted my eyes a little bit, and the gradients are exactly the same. Clever.
@richardwiseman told me it’s real. I for one believe him. Excellent illusion!
That youtube commenters are moron aint nuttin’ new, now is it?
If you know the 1st thing about the human visual system, this is a well known psycho-optic effect. As a matter of fact, we totally suck at judging absolute intensities, because that’s not how our visual system works, we see the change in intensity, and the change in the change (the 2nd derivative). The human visual system is an edge-detection machine.
/Z
‘katie’ is correct.
You can easily try this in a photo-editing program or somesuch, and it’s quite fun.
If you also move the diamond onto one of the white spaces, it is darker than the darkest row, due to how the trick works.
Clever fun. :’D
It’s 100% real, it ‘s an exmaple of colour assimilation.
Okay, everyone says real and have gone on to prove it so I’ll say fake…do I win anything?
i saw something similar on charlie rose last nite, & it was not fake.
http://www.charlierose.com/ (click on the “last night” link on the right)
Hey guys,
I think Beau Lotto talks about this effect on TED.com. Check it out for a clear explanation into this illusion.
Search- “Beau Lotto: Optical illusions show how we see” in the TED search field.
Enjoy
As a web designer, I see this happen all the time with gradients and what-not!
Ed.
A very nice optical illusion.
I was inspired to reproduce this at once. Very easy to do with any graphic software (I use GIMP). Printed it out, it works perfectly, and it confused my wife thoroughly
Fantastic… one of the best illusions I’ve seen!
Erm how does this work? I just copied a screenshot of the illusion into paint and then selected and copied just the diamonds (with no other colours) into another paint but they still look like diamonds…. shouldn’t I now see a just a solid block of colour?
@Steve: No the trick is not the other colours. The trick is that the diamonds are not uniformly coloured but have a gradient.
“Erm how does this work? I just copied a screenshot of the illusion into paint and then selected and copied just the diamonds (with no other colours) into another paint but they still look like diamonds…. shouldn’t I now see a just a solid block of colour?”
No. All the diamonds have the same GRADIENT of colour on them: light at the top and dark at the bottom, so they contrast at the edges where they meet.
If you think about it, no amount of white at the top of an image is going to make you see diamonds in a solid block of colour
Wow!!!
so many posts with the same answer. don’t you ppl read before you post??
Next time just cut and paste your post…it’s quicker
Msg from Abeo: It’s because the comments don’t show until they are approved, so people don’t know if it’s already been answered at that point
If you’re too lazy to do the Photoshop/Paint thing, or if you just want to convince yourself that it’s real “with your own eyes”, try cover the white triangles at the top of the picture with your hand or a book. That helps to see that the diamonds actually are all the same. At least it does for me.