Funny enough, my GF saw brown, but that was after it flipped from white & gold to black brown & blue for her. She refused to believe that the dress would have been black at all.
The image looks to me like photo taken of a Blk&Blu dress under a standard tungsten/orange house light. There was a bit of gold coloring to the left of the center frame, but I interpret it as reflection of light off the glossy material. I do see brown pixels, but I don't interpret them as anything other than a black material. If I said otherwise, it would be like me calling a white ball under a shadow a "grey ball". I would just feel like I was being a smartass.
For example, I see that practically everything in this room is made from a white material, despite the orange and pink lighting.
The B&B dress is the same for me, but under an orange light.
A friend of mine saw it as white and gold, but his lighting interpretation was that the photo was captured under a bluish light because the white material had a bluish tint.
The best part is that no one is wrong. The question isn't really what color the dress is, but how the image is interpreted.
From the beginning the image was a mystery. Honestly part of the problem with this is options, people see a great deal of shades in between, but give them only two choices, they pick one of the two. A more honest opinion is to ask what color with no options available.
From the start with this I saw a bluish white with a deep tan. Now that I've seen the original I can't see it the same way because the mystery of what shade those colors were has been answered by the original.
CAUTION: I'm not trying to call anyone dumb in this next part, most people don't have and don't need any color knowledge and that's why this dress issue is so amazing, but the researchers should have this knowledge. What I find surprising is that people in the realm of vision and color studies don't understand how individuals can form different opinions of these colors when a core aspect in photography are the many variables going into what people see in color and how there is no way to see a color as being true. Every color is selected mentally based upon the environment it is presented in. Even when our brains are presented the factual solution to a color puzzle most often people CAN NOT see the updated results because the hard-wiring of the brain as a comparative visual organ overrides logic and reality. Case in point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion
[bimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Grey_square_optical_illusion.PNG[/bimg]
To be honest just like trying to spot movement at night the only way to perceive the colors as their natural element is to look away from the object and let the light from the peripheral come into the eye. Then you can observe the color and not the created reality of their blending. This sort of de-couples the brains function of seeing a scene in the color scheme and the true color palate will be clear. That has a lot to do with how visual information is processed outside the cone of perception field, but that's a very long story. A tiny piece on the subject explaining the regions of vision, each region plays a significant part in how and what we see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_vision
To test this look again at the middle picture in the shadow illusion but only look at the border just above the two lines.
So its a very interesting thing, but honestly some old news in the world of color and neurology. What I'm really curious about is my inability to revert back to the original image once I understand the "true" nature of the composition. Who can go back, and who cant? This has some major neurological implications and I have no idea what they may be.
Also remember that vision is a learned skill, it stands to reason that there will be many different ways to observe the same item based upon experience and comparatives just like there are many accents and expressions available in English. ( let alone the hundreds of different languages )
