Black And White Photo Shows How An Optical Illusion Can Trick Our Brain Into Coloring It

What do you see? This bizarre and apparently effective optical illusion is sweeping the internet because it turns an ordinary black and white photo into a color one. I say apparently because somehow it doesn’t quite work for me, I only see annoying colored grid lines all over the photo!

Image credits: Øyvind Kolås

Black And White Photo Shows How An Optical Illusion Can Trick Our Brain Into Coloring It

Image credits: page_eco

The image, created by digital media artist and software developer Øyvind Kolås, tricks your brain into ‘filling in the gaps,’ taking the cues from the colored lines to predict what the rest of the picture should look like. Kolås calls the photo illusion experiment a ‘color assimilation grid illusion,’ and is simply different colored grids laid over a greyscale photo.

Black And White Photo Shows How An Optical Illusion Can Trick Our Brain Into Coloring It

Image credits: Øyvind Kolås

“An over-saturated colored grid overlaid on a grayscale image causes the grayscale cells to be perceived as having color,” Kolås said about the illusion photo on his Patreon page.

Black And White Photo Shows How An Optical Illusion Can Trick Our Brain Into Coloring It

Image credits: Øyvind Kolås

It isn’t only grids that have the desired effect, although they appear to be the most effective for most people. Dots and lines also work to create the eye trick in a similar fashion, with the lines working best to produce overall color for me personally.
What about you?

Black And White Photo Shows How An Optical Illusion Can Trick Our Brain Into Coloring It

Image credits: Øyvind Kolås

Black And White Photo Shows How An Optical Illusion Can Trick Our Brain Into Coloring It

Image credits: Manuel Schmalstieg

Black And White Photo Shows How An Optical Illusion Can Trick Our Brain Into Coloring It

Image credits: Øyvind Kolås

Black And White Photo Shows How An Optical Illusion Can Trick Our Brain Into Coloring It

Image credits: hodefoting

Black And White Photo Shows How An Optical Illusion Can Trick Our Brain Into Coloring It

Image credits: MathKyle

You can see the experiment in video form below

Image credits: Øyvind Kolås

Here’s how people reacted to the illusion

Black And White Photo Shows How An Optical Illusion Can Trick Our Brain Into Coloring It

As a Visual Editor at Bored Panda, I indulge in the joy of curating delightful content, from adorable pet photos to hilarious memes, all while nurturing my wanderlust and continuously seeking new adventures and interests—sometimes thrilling, sometimes daunting, but always exciting!

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James is a Bored Panda reporter who graduated with a BA in Peace And Conflict Studies and an MA in African Affairs. Before Bored Panda, he was an English teacher and also travelled a lot, doing odd jobs from beer-slinging to brickie's labourer and freelance journalism along the way. James loves covering stories about social and environmental issues and prefers to highlight the positive things that unite us, rather than petty internet squabbles about fictional characters. James is the grumpy, contradictory one who thinks that Bored Panda, due to its large audience, has a social responsibility to inspire and inform its readers with interesting issues and entertaining, well-researched stories. Let's do our bit to make our little corner of the internet a smarter, more truthful and less angry place!

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What do you think ?

POST

Sill Marien 5 years ago

if lines are in color then IT IS IN COLOR full stop

39points

Dynein 5 years ago

Indeed. I wonder how much of the effect is due to image compression. I opened the images in GIMP and zoomed in - The pixels between the patterns are colored. RANDOMLY, mind you - but for the thin lines, which work best for me, there are very thin faint lines of the same color between them... Which probably happened when saving the image as jpg. That format averages over pixels (and thereby colors), that's sort of the point. I feel tempted to try this out with png and see if the effect remains...

2points

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2WheelTravlr 5 years ago

The photo itself remains black and white, the lines are overlayed on top of the black and white image. You can actually do this in real life by drawing the lines with indelible ink on a clear sheet and laying it on top of a photo.

1point

laserbarn 5 years ago

I know right? When I clicked on the article I expected to learn that even the lines are black and white and the brain is just playing tricks on us, that would have been completely amazing. Adding colored lines however? Well of course our brains will "color" the image in the color of the lines. This just seems like a clickbait article.

-1point

Daria B 5 years ago

This is really cool. But if you read a lot of comics, you'd recognize this very familiar technique. ♥

19points

Leodavinci 5 years ago

Color in color comics (and most printing) is produced by the four-color printing process, not by any sort of B&W optical illusion. Semi-transparent inks (cyan, magenta, yellow) of different dot patterns in various percentages are printed over a base layer of (non-transparent) black ink... which may be solid and/or dot pattern (for grey). Been the same basic process for nearly a century.

7points

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Mimi 5 years ago

It feels interesting and is amazing, but basically we don't get to see a black and white image, but a partially colored image. (Since there ARE added colors.) Squint your eyes, as it blurres, your brain won't have to fill in the gaps.

16points

Dynein 5 years ago

Most importantly, the image compression algorithm (jpg) means the image IS already slightly blurred, especially for the thin lines. I wonder if saving the altered images as png might have led to a less impressive result...

2points

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