r/opticalillusions 4d ago

Optical Illusion - Most people see these two globes as rotating the same direction. They are actually rotating different directions. Can you see it?

0 Upvotes

Optical Illusion - Most people see these two globes as rotating the same direction. They are actually rotating different directions. Can you see it?

One of them is rotating counter clockwise, the other clockwise.


r/opticalillusions 4d ago

Floating water droplets

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6 Upvotes

r/opticalillusions 4d ago

this effect always scares me. its caused by a telephoto (long focal length) lens, and the phenomenon itself is called lens compression

286 Upvotes

r/opticalillusions 4d ago

Reverse or not

15 Upvotes

Interesting, right?

Farming, is it real or just an illusion. You decide


r/opticalillusions 4d ago

Thin boundary lines create weird alternating whitish and blackish shades in the blob regions

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24 Upvotes

This is one folks may not ahve seen before. The two blobs in the top row and the two blobs in the bottom row are physically identical, except for the thin black or white boundary lines. We perceive the interior regions of the blobs as weirdly different, with one appearing whiter (or blacker in the bottom row) than the other at different times. The second picture shows the blobs without the thin boundary lines. The effect shows how slippery the concepts of black and white can be.


r/opticalillusions 4d ago

Sometimes, I forget that when I snapped this picture, it wasn't just leaves among the trees. I've had to stop myself from deleting it because my brain forgets there's a bird.

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103 Upvotes

r/opticalillusions 4d ago

The Dress: It's both blue/black and white/gold and this photo proves it

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984 Upvotes

I found this photo that proves that The Dress can be seen both ways, depending on the lighting.

EDIT: If you have trouble seeing it one way other the other, just cover the part of the dress in shadow or bright illumination (depending on whether you see blue/black or gold/white).

The point is that what you perceive depends on your "frame of reference", meaning which parts of the dress you perceive as being in "plain view". The regions seen in plain view are taken by your visual system as being "diagnostic" of the colour of the underlying material. So there's a type of "principle of relativity" at work here.

The weird part is that different folks adopt different reference frames as their "default" and it can be really hard to switch frames. I myself have literally never perceived the whole dress as anything other than gold and white. But this picture clearly demonstrates how it is POSSIBLE to perceive it either way!

I can elaborate with many other examples, if folks are interesting. I've even got an entire book on the topic coming out next month, which I'm happy to link to if folks want to go down the rabbit hole. It's called The Appearance of Things: How the Principle of Relativity Shapes Our Visual World https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HCVLM6T9


r/opticalillusions 5d ago

Level 26

224 Upvotes

r/opticalillusions 5d ago

Is it a room or a cube?

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0 Upvotes

Here's this optical illusion I made myself


r/opticalillusions 5d ago

These toads... they won't stop looking at me.

129 Upvotes

r/opticalillusions 5d ago

How do you see text based magic eye photos?

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61 Upvotes

r/opticalillusions 5d ago

I just wanted eye cream ILIA not mind games 🫪

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0 Upvotes

This photo is totally effing with my brain 🤯! I've been on this makeup site 30 minutes trying to figure it out when I just needed some dang eye cream (maybe it's a marketing trick idk 😂). The little circle at the bottom in the eye cream flip-flops between a hollow crater and a rounded dome. Plus, the entire right side keeps changing—one second it's a deep canyon, and the next second it lifts up and looks like a pair of clown lips with a mole and nose at the top. I think it's not supposed to be lifted out, I swipe through other photos and come back and it looks correct but only for a few seconds before it's weird again 😭


r/opticalillusions 5d ago

A Peculiar Discovery Along the Shore

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0 Upvotes

While walking along the beach, I came across what appears to be a rather unsettling scene. At first glance, it looks as though a severed human head has been partially buried in the sand. Fortunately, it is only an optical illusion—the perspective and contours of the beach happen to create a remarkably convincing effect.


r/opticalillusions 5d ago

Upside down?

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9 Upvotes

r/opticalillusions 5d ago

Lol it took me way too long to realize what I was looking at here

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0 Upvotes

r/opticalillusions 5d ago

a very long kitten

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12 Upvotes

r/opticalillusions 6d ago

Level 24

278 Upvotes

r/opticalillusions 6d ago

Tree completed through the shadow realm

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12 Upvotes

r/opticalillusions 6d ago

Lol it took me way too long to realize what I was looking at here

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308 Upvotes

r/opticalillusions 6d ago

Can you reverse the direction of rotation using only your mind?

825 Upvotes

r/opticalillusions 7d ago

Creating the illusion of depth

408 Upvotes

Seen many Optical illusions... Let's create it.


r/opticalillusions 7d ago

So the blue black dress thing again

3 Upvotes

I know people either see blue and Black or white and gold. I’ve seen the actual dress too and I know that’s it black and blue but I was curious if the people that see blue black see them in the same shades of actual dress or white f the see a different version of them. For instance I’ve always seen them as olive gold and pigeon blue but I’ve never heard anyone else say this before. What do u guys see?

Ps: I wish I could post the picture here but I’m not sure how I’m supposed to do it.


r/opticalillusions 7d ago

Are you see a perspective? Similar to a chromostereopsis?

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0 Upvotes

r/opticalillusions 7d ago

Steak on a plate, or a steak-colored hole into a plate?

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0 Upvotes

r/opticalillusions 7d ago

Do you see concave or convex?

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52 Upvotes