What colour are these strawberries?

Red obviously?



Wrong, in fact they are grey!

A picture of a strawberry tart has got the internet talking, because whilst it might look reasonably normal, things aren't quite as they seem.
At first glance it looks like a poorly taken photo, or maybe one with far too many filters on it.
But what is actually in front of you is a picture with absolutely no red pixels.
The red colour of the strawberries is merely your mind playing tricks on you because of the blue background.
Things look different under, for example, fluorescent office lighting than they do in softer, lounge lighting so our brain makes an adjustment to make sure that we still see strawberries as red, regardless of where we're eating them.
It's called colour consistency
Bevil Conway, an expert on visual perception, told Motherboard that "your brain says, 'The light source that I'm viewing these strawberries under has some blue component to it, so I'm going to subtract that automatically from every pixel.'
"And when you take grey pixels and subtract out this blue bias, you end up with red."
And of course, because we know strawberries are red, that also helps the brain give them the correct colouring.


More pictures and a fuller explanation here -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/39132378/these-strawberries-are-red-right-wrong

I'd like to see a control picture of the same strawberries without the blue tint to see if they're really grey.

Anybody can post a picture of some (obviously) red strawberries and claim that they're actually grey but until I see some photographic proof, I'm calling bullshit.

Here's a picture of a purple banana I found last week at the bottom of our fruit bowl.

I took a picture of it on my phone with a puce filter but it looks yellow because your brain expects narners to be yellow, but really it's purple, I swear!

Stop messing bread, the banana is obviously blue

Bread2.0 wrote:I'd like to see a control picture of the same strawberries without the blue tint to see if they're really grey.

Anybody can post a picture of some (obviously) red strawberries and claim that they're actually grey but until I see some photographic proof, I'm calling bullshit.

Here's a picture of a purple banana I found last week at the bottom of our fruit bowl.

I took a picture of it on my phone with a puce filter but it looks yellow because your brain expects narners to be yellow, but really it's purple, I swear!

Bread2.0 wrote:I'd like to see a control picture of the same strawberries without the blue tint to see if they're really grey.

Anybody can post a picture of some (obviously) red strawberries and claim that they're actually grey but until I see some photographic proof, I'm calling bullshit.

Here's a picture of a purple banana I found last week at the bottom of our fruit bowl.

I took a picture of it on my phone with a puce filter but it looks yellow because your brain expects narners to be yellow, but really it's purple, I swear!

Well if you had clicked on the link provided - you would!

I don't get it. Are those strawberries actually grey or has someone taken a picture of red strawberries and changed the colour of them on the picture to make their point? I think I'm answering my first question with my next question which is - where the fuck do you find grey strawberries? 

There is no picture in that link that shows the strawberries without any sort of filter whatsoever. Sorry if I'm being a bit thick but that doesn't explain things in an idiot proof way that I can understand.

The point that is being made in the picture is that your brain (my brain, anyone's brain) overrides what your eyes see if it isn't making sense to it - a sort of optical illusion (but in colour).

The picture is constructed in such a way - it must have been a real picture of 'red' strawberries originally - that the red pixels have been taken out leaving a grey colour - which our eyes are seeing - but our brains are not accepting it, knowing that that can't be correct and making us see the red that isn't there.

I'll try and pick out a few more famous examples of brains overriding our eyes - one of which 'the dress' is also linked to on the link above.

Sluffy wrote:

The picture is constructed in such a way - it must have been a real picture of 'red' strawberries originally - that the red pixels have been taken out leaving a grey colour - which our eyes are seeing - but our brains are not accepting it, knowing that that can't be correct and making us see the red that isn't there.

Thank you. My tiny mind is now satisfied.

The Dress -

What colour is it?



White and gold or blue and black?







It is actually blue and black.



A long explanation on wiki -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress

We've got some strawberries in the fridge bought yesterday in Sainsbury. They look red to me but I think I might chuck them out as there's no way I'm eating grey strawberries. I'll have a blue orange instead as one of my five a day.

This is my favourite optical illusion and demonstrates the point of our brain overriding what our eyes see. -