Very Cool Illusion

[Ninja]

Hope this is not a repost

Cool Illusion Here (http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html)

Anyone know how it actually work?

[Matt]

You know how if you stare at a lightbulb when you look away you see 'Ghosts', Like littile purple bag or cloud shaped shapes. Same deal I think.

[Bentusi]

yeah kinda. Has do to with retinal optics but i forget what.

[Karmashock]

The color rods in your eyes get tired and don't refresh fast enough basically. This also has to do with the way humans precieve color. We are always doing an automatic full scene 'white balance' which is what you do with a video camera before filming in any given place. Basically you're correcting for lighting issues.


There is a similar effect you can try where you can see FULL color in an image that is only made up of Red and Green or Red and Blue or Blue and Green layers.

Poloriod of all people actually descovered this when they were trying to make cheap instant cameras. They figured out that people will see full color images that aren't even RGB... I forget what this propertity is called... but you're seeing green in those spots because the rods get tired basically.


You see stuff like that if you look at the shadow of red object on white, the shadow looks blue... that's just the color balance getting f'ed up in your head... it explains why you see a green dot instead of a pink one in those areas though...