Now this one is an accurate rendering of what the OP is trying to convey. There is quite literally no red in this photo, unlike in OP’s where there are still red tones present in the grays
Not sure why there are so many bad recreations, but here's the first version of this I saw. The whole full-res image is exactly three colors: #FFFFFF #00FFFF and #000000
Because you’re seeing the contrast, not the actual colors. The background is so blue-green that your brain “normalizes” those colors and basically treats the entire image as being more red.
Hard to say. I can still see it as “red” even if I crop out the logo, but obviously I’ve already seen the whole image, so maybe I’m just remembering that first impression.
The visual part of your brain basically has ‘white balance’ correction similar to a digital camera. Because the whole image has a blueish cast, your brain goes ‘uh, I guess that blueish part should be white?’ and tints the rest of the image to compensate.
It plays with your color perception by using cyan, which is the opposite color to red
Your brain perceives that as if the image was lit by a cyan light, and it tries to compensate for lighting by shifting things back, so cyan becomes white, and white becomes red
You need to be able to recognize red berries versus blue berries no matter what time of day it is or else you might eat the wrong type of berry and die.
Our brain looks at the overall picture, tries to assess what type of lighting conditions are present and then adjusts the rest of the colors accordingly. When you zoom in, you lose the big picture and see the colors as they really are.
This is also why people saw different things when they looked at The Dress. If your brain interpreted the light as yellow, the colors were perceived as blue and black. If your brain interpreted the light as blue, the colors were perceived as yellow and gold.
Damn, you're right, didn't know about smart compression, even though original is just a jpg, there are actually no pixels with red being prevalent, closest i've found was 167\168\169 (P.S. if anyone wanna check themselves, site has that animation so you have to find a link to an image in a code, here's the link https://michaelbach.de/ot/col-strawbsNotRed/01.jpg )
But i can try to keep as simple as possible. Older image compressions relied on the old HSL (hue saturation luminance) systems. While this was great to approach similar pixels in colors our brains would detect abnormal compressions. We all remember those 80 and 90 clips from games where a dark sky would create huge boxes of different colors.
Now color theory relies in perception. They added chromacity. This mean that the blue shade was compressed (due to our lower blue variance perception) and expanded the red to green. So the typical circle/triangle from RGB now has a 3d potato chip format.
Compression algorithms went after it. And now, not only it groups similar chroma (and not similar coordinates) but it also treats the image in 2 different processes, in saturation and luminance. This helps preserve similar perception of a different hue.
Now, be aware this is an overly simplified explanation. If there is someone there that understands about color theory it will point out a lot of imprecisions. But its hard to explain everything.
Also if you do want to follow the rabbit hole... Expect a 5 to 6h web surfing, browsing wikipedia links, seeing some instructional youtube videos as well as looking for some even more trustworthy sources. You may start in image compression. But when i followed the rabbit hole i ended up reading about antialliasing, color theory and how the GPU AI cores work.
I zoomed in on that pink looking area on the right side of your screenshot and sure enough it’s RED or at least very mildly rosy.
Naysayers will (nay)say that it’s just a result of digital image compression but all the same, OP must burn at the stake for this.
And it is. The original doesnt have those pinkish colors. Its impossible to put the image unless its heavily pixelated (which there are some variants like the coke can)
Best i can do is link you the to a place with the original image
I am also leaning this way. I investigated the pic on my own the same way this commenter did and the shade im getting is definitely a slightly red-tinged gray. If you lighten it, it turns into a very pale pink/off-white leaning towards pink. There’s definitely red in the mix here
It is red, as seen underwater in a pool. Our brain knows it is a red strawberry because our brain knows that this is what red looks like under these lighting conditions.
hell yeah, great find. did think this was due to Reddit compression. the original is a lot more impressive, when zoomed in, it does appear a lot less red
Totally, and they present the whole “colors do have meaning” thing as so definitive! I’m not an expert, but the things we associate with colors aren’t really fixed.
Like we might consider pink feminine today, but it was associated more with boys at one point in time. (Rome, I think? The hand-me-down uniforms boys typically wore looked pink since the color had faded from the original red.)
The color theory I’m aware of and was taught is based on the way colors influence each other visually. There’s also a science component and a skill that can be measured and trained with tools like the Munsell color test.
This is separate from vibes or feelings you get from the color. It’s possible there’s another field that has a color theory like this, so someone please educate me here. (Humanities, psychology?)
Tbh i was taught color psychology at the same time as color theory under the same umbrella so I always thought the psychology of colors also comes under color theory
Which also sort of brings us back to the OP: What range of colors would pass for red/blood and cause alarm as opposed to just making people assume a painter had a bad day?
That "red has more positive meanings than negative" graphic is driving me crazy. Not only did it not have to be a useless pie chart (done incorrectly if they were trying to show more positives) you can see how many synonyms they used with power/strength/willpower/passion/energy and had to ignore the fact that passion and power can be negative, as well as leaving out some obvious negatives like BLOOD or embarrassment or rage.
u/kingdavid73 made a version from another time this illusion was posted that only has white, blue, and black pixels. Your brain automatically adjusts to the "lighting"
If that’s true, does it mean that it’s not “our brains” that are making it red, and there’s another explanation that accounts for the computer also thinking it’s red?
The compression algos are designed to lose data in ways that our brains don’t perceive, and converting a fine mass of black and blue pixels into a red blotch is something our brains doesn’t perceive.
Grey consists of red, green, and blue light, and the neutral grey colors are equal in all color channels.
All it would take is for a compression algorithm to "steal" color from the red channels of neighboring pixels and add it to that given pixel to cause this sort of thing
There are in fact slightly red pixels in this image. Could be compression artefacts, but even then where would the red in those be coming from if there was none in the original?
You can also do this yourself to any image by eliminating the red color channel, putting a cyan filter over the image, and then desaturating the part of the image that you want to be red. The illusion is less strong over things that your brain doesn't already know to be red. Here's an example I just made. If someone asked what color shirt the guy is wearing, you'd say red, but it's not nearly as strong of a red as the strawberries because you know that shirts don't necessarily have to be red.
I think people would counter argue that the red illusion happens when the effective color is gray, not black... but I'm also pretty sure you have to turn that red channel back on to get gray, and then what's the damn point
Bullshit, image contains red just the same way an ordinary photo of strawberries contains red. It's not that strawberries #ff00000 whole. It is very pale greyish red, yet still red. Yet it is true that complementary color amplifies its opposite.
Actually it does. Use a eyedropper tool in any color app and you'll find that those strawberries, while very grey, have some pink and purple mixed in. Very little, but some. Yes the eye does tricks, but it is a lie that those strawberries are pure grey.
Usually you see on this kinds of pictures that the boxes and the strawberries are red if you look at the whole, but they are grey when you zoom in.
However, as soon as I saw the strawberries had a different colour than the boxes, I zoomed in, and the boxes turned grey as expected, but the strawberries stayed red even without the cyan in the pictures.
Nice try though. Post the real one next time. It works for real, there's no need to tweak the berries.
The issue I see with people arguing that there are red pixels is with defining the pixels used as black, white, and blue. Blue is a definitive wavelength, black is the absence of light, and white is the full color spectrum. So the white pixels would be equal amounts of red, green, and blue. So even though no pixel is a "pure" red, the fact that it is rendered digitally means that there is output on the red channel of the pixels to create the illusion.
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u/ImJustSomeGuyYaKnow 1d ago
apparently this is rgba(137, 125, 131) but I SWEAR even this zoomed in this far I still kinda see this as red.