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Blue and Green? No, They are the Same Color.

By Queuebot in Everything Else on Jun 25, 2009 at 1:22 pm


The spiral appears to have arms of green, blue, and pink/magenta – but what appears to be blue and what appears to be green are actually identical colors, confirmed by spectrometry.

The reason they look [like] different colors is because our brain judges the color of an object by comparing it to surrounding colors. In this case, the stripes are not continuous as they appear at first glance. The orange stripes don’t go through the “blue” spiral, and the magenta ones don’t go through the “green” one.

If you don’t believe it, see the closeup view at Bad Astronomy. Link – via j-walkblog

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.


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COMMENT
  1. Wes
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 1:40 pm

    Yep! Checked it in Photoshop.

  2. VonSkippy
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 1:51 pm

    You are getting Sleeeeeeepy.......

  3. required
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    that is wild

  4. emmakate
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 2:09 pm

    I also used the eyedropper function and there are variations of colors according to my computer. I've seen illusions like this before, but since this image is pixelated instead of a vector image, there are a few different shades of bluish-green/seafoam green

  5. ken
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 2:20 pm

    Well, sort of. There are an awful lot of really blue pixels at the edges of the bands that 'appear blue' and yellowy-green pixels at the edge of the 'green' bands. No surprise that our low resolution eyes blend those.

    The implication is that an aqua color can appear bluer or greener depending whether it's next to orange or pink. This 'illusion' does not demonstrate this.

    An honest demonstration would use just the three colors. I bet the effect would be far less dramatic.

  6. Davidnj
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 2:52 pm

    I tried this with the thumbnail that was on the article when it was in the Upcoming line, and the colors were in fact different, but then I clicked through to the article. I thought someone was trying to fool me for a second.

  7. Dannj
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 3:17 pm

    I just checked it in photoshop they are the same color only the image on here is pixelated but when you use the eye dropper you only get a slightly different code for the seafoam green depending on which swirl. As in stated in the previous post, had this been a vector image there would be no cause for disagreement.

  8. SenorMysterioso
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 3:22 pm

    Ugh, brings back memories of a boring color theory class that I had where we made hundreds of these sort of images.

  9. Felipe Venancio
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 3:43 pm

    That's F*cked UP!

  10. Badjuk
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 3:43 pm

    This is green !

  11. Foreigner1
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 3:46 pm

    Faaaaar Out!!!!!!!

    ... Why is it that I seem to miss about 9 hours and that I have sore hands with blood on them......?

  12. Sofar
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 4:39 pm

    I've used the phenomonon in my drawings. Never had a color theory class in my life.

  13. Eri
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 4:53 pm

    In photoshop, the blues and greens are definitely NOT the same colors. Which means, technically, the colors we're seeing in the above posted image are definitely different. In those pixels are spots of the same shade of Cyan, but the actual colors are, in fact, tinted differently. If the colors were truly the same on the monitor, zooming in would show them to be the same as well, and it doesn't.

    This may be true to the naked eye with an image actually printed using only one color, but it isn't true here.

  14. Alex
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 5:15 pm

    Very cool! I think the different colors you see @photoshop may be the artifact of the image being saved and re-saved for the blog post. Still - a very neat optical illusion.

  15. Wes
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 6:10 pm

    Sigh ... Yes, you will get slightly different colors if you use the eyedropper tool ON THE IMAGE ABOVE because of antialiasing and artifacting.

    Follow the link and look at the ORIGINAL IMAGE. The color is #00ff96.

    (BTW, if you're using the eyedropper tool in Photoshop, make sure you're using "point sample" and not a 3x3 or 5x5 average.)

  16. Carl
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 6:18 pm

    Thank the Good Dude for you Wes, you saved me from typing up the exact same thing.

  17. Kalel
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 6:38 pm

    I see a dolphin.

  18. Mitch
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 6:55 pm

    Ok, now if wear a brown necktie or grow a brown moustache I won't have to quit drinking coffee or have
    my teeth whitened.

  19. zav
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 7:03 pm

    Nope.
    Green at 26 FF 98 in top right middle of band.
    Blue at 22 FC A2 in top left of middle of band.

    There is a fair amount of JPEG pixelation. If this were a PNG, it might really work.

    Close though.

  20. 4thirty
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 7:25 pm

    http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/6388/kinda.jpg

    alot closer than it looks normaly.

  21. Miss Cellania
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 8:24 pm

    I wondered whether my resizing of and converting to a .png image would affect the colors. You should test the image at the link. But when you look at the zoomed inset at the link, they are clearly the same.

  22. Johnny Cat
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 8:34 pm

    @Kalel:

    Best laugh I had all day.

  23. ted
    Jun 25th, 2009 at 8:45 pm

    Picky, picky.

  24. BikerRay
    Jun 26th, 2009 at 5:16 am

    zav - It IS a png image (maybe it was updated). But there is still distortion near the edges. The original gif on the linked page is fine, though.

  25. Guest
    Jun 26th, 2009 at 6:25 am

    Not the same colour, checked in paint. Took me about 30 seconds.

    Would be nice if you could do the same.

  26. Ned
    Jun 26th, 2009 at 7:32 am

    This was the back cover of my color theory book in college:

    http://tinyurl.com/mqk3xv

    The two smaller squares are the same color.

    Josef Albers was the man.

  27. Christophe
    Jun 26th, 2009 at 3:00 pm

    fake!

    ;)

  28. Graphic Design Blog
    Jul 2nd, 2009 at 3:53 am

    Yeah...I checked it in Paint...they are not the same colors.

  29. Diva
    Jan 29th, 2010 at 11:37 pm

    OK guys, I checked in photoshop and they are the same color. Not sure where you guys are sampling but if you sample the green and the blue they both come out to #00ff96

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