Even in the highest white gold setting I still see the dress as being blue and black - just with low saturation. I don't get it, but this helps, thanks.
I too was looking at this and thinking, "How can anyone say that that dress looks white and gold?" I could only see blue and black.
I went outside to get lunch, came back, got yet another dress picture in my social feed but lo, it was white and gold...!
My immediate assumption was that I had seen a doctored image but having gone back to this post, where I previously could only see blue and black, I could now only see white and gold.
My hypothesis is therefore that the type of light you've recently been experiencing influences how your brain interprets the colours in the dress image.
Going from daylight into artificial fluorescent lighting gives White/Gold. But, after some time under fluorescent lighting it turns Blue/Black. For me this hypothesis is somewhat supported by the fact that now that I've been back inside for 20 minutes the dress is Blue/Black again.
This was a trio of rooms which were saturated with either blue, red or green light. On entering each room everything appeared tinted with the colour of the light. However, after 5 minutes the brain had restored the perceived balance to normal. You could entirely forget that you were in a colour saturated room.
When moving to another of the rooms the effect began again but with everything tinted whatever colour the new room was saturated in before gradually adapting back to "normal".
I think this supports my above hypothesis. The brain takes some time to adjust to new light sources and will skew perceived colours for a short time after changing the ambient light source.
[1] http://www.designboom.com/art/carlos-cruz-diez-circumstance-...
When I saw the actual picture of the dress in good lighting I questioned my sanity. :)
I do get a gold tint on the black, for sure, but if I were asked the colors of the dress, it's still unquestionably blue & black, the whole photo just looks like it has a sickly yellow tint on it.
Edit: I should have said I get the gold tint when I slide the slider to the yellow (right).
I want to know what some tetrachromacic people see.
The funny thing is, this morning when I first "got it", the blue was very light, and I've been looking at the original tumbler throughout the day and I swear it's getting darker blue every time.
Now I can't even see the white and it's kind of blowing my mind. I remember the WTF moment when people said it was blue/black and only seeing white/gold, but I just can't reverse it and see it again.
Making the image smaller/cropped/etc doesn't really change that, for whatever reason. Maybe my brain is remembering the context.