Amazing what the eyes can do for you. Another great thing is where you see 'white' in a picture, but when isolated it is almost pure yellow, or green, or chartreuse.

Our vision system is optimized to keep us alive, not to provide true-color sampling. I actually think that is a good thing ;-)

In this case, the visual system works hard to interpret what it sees as a 3-dimensional field in which we might have to move (or flee). It rejects the highly unlikely (in the history of man) scenario that it might be a flat image constructed just to trick us about some colors.

You win the award, outstanding use of photoshop in a non-standard application.

Seriously, though, I have a very unusual six year old daughter who, when we went to a book fair at the local elementary school, picked out a book of optical illusions. It's still one of her favorite books. Can you say Escher? Sure, I thought you could.

I didn't believe it either ("No flippin' way!" were my exact words), but I replicated your experiment in Photoshop and it is completly true. Mind-boggling.

When I posted a link to that image on Southern Appeal a few days ago, the commenters couldn't believe it either. It's probably one of the neatest optical illusions around.

It is not!...

That is the strangest thing I have seen in awhile!

It's a conspiracy, maaannn !

Strange, I only see black and white.

I trust you on this one Will.

Don't MAKE me bust out Photoshop . . .

I didn't believe it either, so I did basically the same thing...and it is the same shade. Weird.

It is one of those right wing conspiracy things!... I wonder if Hillary as seen this?

DAG NAB IT! Now I have a headache. Does that mean the aclu could sue for my tylenol bills (ha ha)