Here's Why This Black and White Photo Is Going Viral, and People Are Seeing It in Color

Some black and white photos have been going viral all of the sudden, and it seems to be because people are seeing them in color. Over on Twitter, the photos began making the rounds, due to the optical illusion-like nature of their visuals. The photos are technically black and white images, but have colored grids across them, which give our brains the perception of colored photographs.

Twitter user Øyvind Kolås explained the illusion: "The image for the post is a visual/artistic experiment playing with simultanous contrast resulting from other experiments these days. An over-saturated colored grid overlayed on a grayscale image causes the grayscale cells to be perceived as having color."

The trick is very interesting and can also be done with uniform lines or dots as well. Many people have since taken to social media to comment on the illusion, which is truly mind-blowing.

Illusory colorization of photo, psychovisual chroma subsampling by simultanous contrast. Small bits of color colorizes grayscale parts of image. Works better at smaller scale; and when looking at other parts of image. pic.twitter.com/7UwkriMy8a

— ̐🐿ṕ̒ͪͬͯ̐̐̐̐̐̚ȉ̓̈̅̄̓̀p͒̍̚p̏͗̊̔͒̐̐í͆͆̓ͮ̔ͮ͆n̒͐̀͆ (@hodefoting) July 28, 2019

"The blue and green are particularly impressive," one person tweeted.

"The closer the lines are, the harder it is for your brain to distinguish the color and non color areas. It is not that your brain is filling in the color," another commenter offered.

What do you see?

This is actually a black and white photo, but an artist has drawn color lines through it. Your brain is filling in the rest of the colors even though they aren't there.

Look closer....

Work by artist Øyvind Kolås modifying a photo by "Chuwa (Francis). pic.twitter.com/4jhlT4QriW

— Deborah Kay (@debbiediscovers) July 28, 2019

"For some reason it doesn't work [with] the red for me like it does with the other colours," someone else wrote. "yellow and oranger are weaker, while the green and (especially) blue are quite strong. Interesting.

"It works pretty well except for the red," one other user echoed. "Might be just me but I can clearly see the red lines on a grey background."

Illusory Colorization of video, using Blender Animation Studio's “Spring” https://t.co/tXYR0sqZGA

— ̐🐿ṕ̒ͪͬͯ̐̐̐̐̐̚ȉ̓̈̅̄̓̀p͒̍̚p̏͗̊̔͒̐̐í͆͆̓ͮ̔ͮ͆n̒͐̀͆ (@hodefoting) July 28, 2019

"Why are some colors more suggestible than others? I see two t-shirts that are clearly lime green, but the intense red grid does very little for the gray shirts beneath," a fifth curious person said. "I'm not colorblind - does the brain fill in cool colors more easily than warm ones?"

Photo Credit: Øyvind Kolås