To emphasize the importance of lighting in a retail space, recall the harrowing week in February of 2015 when no one could agree on the colors in a photo of a dress. The picture was first posted on Tumblr, then picked up by Buzzfeed, Twitter, and many other media outlets before going viral. Differing assessments from confused Twitter users spread like wildfire. Even Taylor Swift weighed in. The mystery of the dress perplexed so many it escaped the confines of the Web and infected mainstream news shows and talk shows such as Ellen, who saw the dress as white and gold and lamented that arguing over it was “tearing apart friendships and families. This is why I don’t wear dresses.”
Eventually, a clerk at the store where the dress was sold and the discoverer of the dress confirmed its true blue hues. So why did some people see white and gold or blue and orange instead of the actual true color of the dress? Shortly after #TheDress blew up, Buzzfeed and Wired spoke to neuroscientists to find out what exactly was going on.
As it turned out, it was all about the lighting. When the human eye perceives light, it reflects off whatever we look at, enters the eye, and hits the retina. The brain then processes the image, takes the right color out of the light that bounces off what the eyes see, and subtracts that color from the real color of the object.
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Answer:
To emphasize the importance of lighting in a retail space, recall the harrowing week in February of 2015 when no one could agree on the colors in a photo of a dress. The picture was first posted on Tumblr, then picked up by Buzzfeed, Twitter, and many other media outlets before going viral. Differing assessments from confused Twitter users spread like wildfire. Even Taylor Swift weighed in. The mystery of the dress perplexed so many it escaped the confines of the Web and infected mainstream news shows and talk shows such as Ellen, who saw the dress as white and gold and lamented that arguing over it was “tearing apart friendships and families. This is why I don’t wear dresses.”
Eventually, a clerk at the store where the dress was sold and the discoverer of the dress confirmed its true blue hues. So why did some people see white and gold or blue and orange instead of the actual true color of the dress? Shortly after #TheDress blew up, Buzzfeed and Wired spoke to neuroscientists to find out what exactly was going on.
As it turned out, it was all about the lighting. When the human eye perceives light, it reflects off whatever we look at, enters the eye, and hits the retina. The brain then processes the image, takes the right color out of the light that bounces off what the eyes see, and subtracts that color from the real color of the object.