This Photo Has No Red Pixels: A Fascinating Optical Illusion

I initially refused to believe it when this photo came across my feed. My eyes aren’t broken! I can see they’re strawberries, and they’re definitely red. They have to be trolling us with this image, right?

This picture has NO red pixels. Great demo of color constancy (ht Akiyoshi Kitaoka) http://pic.twitter.com/pZHvbB6QHE

— Matt Lieberman (@social_brains) February 27, 2017

I immediately took it into Photoshop and used my color picker because I just had to prove myself that my eyes aren’t deceiving me. I made sure my point sample was set to point sample (the individual pixel). You can’t see my cursor on the print screen but I picked the deepest red I could find.

Uhhh… they all came out gray. That just makes me a little angry! It’s putting my brain in for a complete spin. Try it out for yourself, take it into Photoshop and use your color picker. So what’s exactly happening? Here’s the reasoning below.

The photo was created by Akiyoshi Kitaoka, a Professor of Psychology at Ritsumeikan University in Japan.

While this time everybody is seeing the same thing, the optical illusion is created through a similar phenomenon that caused so much turmoil with The Dress. It’s called color constancy. It’s your brain’s way of color correcting the world when it’s filtered through different light.

When you look around the world, the light that enters your eye is made of different wavelengths that come from both the pigments of the objects around you and the light that illuminates them.
– Source

Thank you to Fizzah Raza for the find!

(via Retouchist)

About the author: Pratik Naik is a photo retoucher specializing in commercial and editorial work. To see his work, head over to his website or give him a follow on Instagram and Facebook.