Look at the red blocks in this picture. Do you know what to look for when you spot an optical illusion like this? That’s right, the red looks like different shades because of the surrounding colors. The red on the left appears darker and the red blocks appear lighter on the right side. This is basically a contrast illusion.
The reason it appears this way is because when the red is on a relatively light background (such as yellow) there is more contrast, and thus, relative to its surroundings, the red appears darker. On the other hand, on the right side of the page the red is not on the yellow background, it’s on the blue background. These have a similar hue, or color intensity, in fact, the red may be slightly lighter in hue than the blue, so the red appears lighter. This is an interesting optical illusion.
Now if you want to look at this picture a little bit more, there’s a second illusion that we can talk about. Look at the red cross on the right side. Hah! See, it’s not a cross, it really is just some red dots, but since your brain likes to make patterns, you’ll at least see a horizontal red line, that looks like it’s hiding behind the yellow bars. Don’t worry, that’s a good thing that your brain can recognize patterns, it helps your problem solving skills!
