Here’s something that will keep you distracted if you’re bored at home! Optical illusions are images or pictures that we perceive differently than they really are. Put another way, optical illusions occur when our eyes send information to our brains that tricks us into perceiving something that does not match reality. Take your sight and your mind on an adventure and go through this list of optical illusions. What do you see?

Color

Twitter lovers, you should remember this one! This image was first posted on the platform by a professor of psychology at Ritsumeikan University to depict the idea of visual perception. It is said that this picture has been drained by any red pixels – so, how come we still perceive the strawberries as red? Color constancy! To keep it simple – we, as humans, know that strawberries are red, so our mind ensures that the perceived color of the object remains relatively constant!

Space and Size Constancy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-yhtXAzYwc

The spinning girl! We’ve all seen this illusion somewhere or another, but how does it work? All silhouettes are ambiguous. Our brain tries to reconstruct the third dimension (space) from the flat image in our eyes, adding information, which is usually realistic, but not really there. In other words, silhouettes are ambiguous – they can turn either way and it would look exactly the same!

What do you see here? Well, at first glance it just looks like a sausage-like figure floating in thin air. Okay, there are more steps to this one! Hold your hands in front of you at about 20 to 30 centimeters distance at eye level, then point your index fingers against each other leaving about 1-centimeter distance between them now look through your fingers so that you can see the floating figure.  You should now be able to to change its length by varying the distance between the fingertips.

Specialties with Faces

What may look like a coffee bean advertisement it actually an optical illusion – there’s a face in there! The picture is accompanied by all sorts of inferences on your mental development depending on delay until you find the face within the beans. It’s like playing ‘Where’s Waldo’! Have you found it yet? Hint: look at the bottom left!

A face on mars!? In 1976 the Viking Orbiter radioed back many images from Mars. Among those form the Cydonia region, one depicted a rock formation that strongly resembled a human-like face staring straight up into the heavens. Do you see it?

A grumpy man, or a pretty woman? Well, it depends on how you look at it. If you are a left-minded person, your eyes will unintentionally read the image from left to right – especially if that is how you normally read words. If so, you’ll see a grumpy man with what looks like to be a mullet. If you are more of an artistic person, you will see a pretty woman first. The right side of your brain is more visual and intuitive.

Geometry

What if we told you this was a flat checkerboard? Well, it is. The bulge in this image is actually illusionary the checkerboard is fully regular, and each check is square as becomes obvious when the small ticks are not present.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltqHJTY8Fhk

Imagine an infinite chocolate bar – one that no matter how much you eat; it will never finish! Well this next geometric optical illusion makes your dreams come true just by rearranging the pieces. How long would you take to eat this chocolate bar?

Luminance and Contrast

Widely known as the Hermann-grid illusion, named after German Psychologist, Ludimar Hermann back in the 1800’s, is one that deceives a person’s vision. The illusion is characterized by “ghostlike” grey blobs perceived at the intersections of a black and white grid. This happens through the neural process called lateral inhibition – basically, the capacity of an excited neuron to reduce the activity of its neighbors in the lateral direction.

Illusions That Went Viral

We just had to! How can anyone forget it? THE dress. Is it black and blue? White and Gold? Some people can actually see both, while others swear it’s either one or the other. Well, we’re here to break it to you and we’re sorry to the white and gold squad, but this dress is actually black and blue after all.

So how come everyone was so confused? To put it in scientific terms the way your brain determines color relies on two things the color of the object you’re seeing and the color of the light source. The image was originally overexposed meaning the light in the image overwhelmed the color of the subject. it’s as simple as that!

We still can’t figure this one out! This picture went viral when this girl was getting ready for a night out and couldn’t figure out which nail polish matches her heels. It seems obvious at first glance that the pink one works best, but look back and forth at both nail polish shades and the shoe – what color would you choose?

What kind of skincare is this? It’s not! Look closely and you’ll see the markers in the top right of this photo, but, at first glance it definitely looks like this girl has some really oily… legs? Some even say that they thought this was a Barbie doll!

Ah! The power of make-up. Meet Mimi Choi – an illusions makeup artist that went viral back in April of 2019. Following fellow artist like Dain Yoon, who went so viral she ended up on the Ellen Show, Mimi creates her own style. Illusions makeup is a huge trend in Asia and has made its way to MUAs around the world to recreate these mind-boggling looks using deep blacks to add illusory depth to their faces.