Visual Illusions

"Incredible Visual Illusions is the most comprehensive and amazing collection of optical illusions ever assembled, with almost three hundred different artworks. You will be amazed as some images flash and scintillate before your eyes, while others disappear right in front of you. Size and shape can lose their meaning, you'll see motion where there is no motion and the laws of perspective are turned on their heads! You won't believe your eyes!" --

Visual illusions are compelling phenomena that draw attention to the brain's capacity to construct our perceptual world. The Compendium is a collection of over 100 chapters on visual illusions, written by the illusion creators or by vision scientists who have investigated mechanisms underlying the phenomena. --

Explore the secrets behind more than 30 of the world's most amazing visual puzzles, tricks, and illusions, and then learn how to make your own with this brand-new title in DK's popular Optical Illusions series. Much more than your average puzzle book, Optical Illusions 2 takes things to the next level, turning these mind-benders into exciting interactive and 3-D games with flaps, tabs, and pullouts, and putting logic and reasoning skills to the test for endless entertainment. You can even explore the science behind illusions and find out exactly how they boggle your brain and fool your eyes. Then, when you're ready to amaze others, use the instructions and tips and 10 template cards provided to draw puzzling patterns, play with perspective, and so much more. It's time to stretch your mental muscles to the max with Optical Illusions 2.

Throughout the book, each image is accompanied by an explanation of how it works, the story behind it – when it was discovered or who invented it first – and the details of exactly why it fools the human brain. The book includes many new and previously unpublished illusions, as well as new adaptations of lesser-known illusions. It also includes works by well-known illusion artists such as Bridget Riley, Salvador Dalí, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Oscar Reutersvärd, René Magritte, István Orosz and Rob Gonsalves. There are chapters on the following subjects: optical illusions from the real world (mirage, refraction, afterimage), ambiguous figures, impossible figures, color adaptation, moving illusions and paradoxical illusions.

Fool your brain with mind-boggling illusions, then get hands-on and make your own to wow your friends! Learn all about the science behind these wacky phenomena, from moving liquid on a page, to shapes that disappear in front of your eyes with this clever guide. The brain is an amazing thing, but it doesn't always get things right when it comes to sight. This book is here to explain why, with astounding images, baffling puzzles, and simple reveals which show the reader how each trick works. Covering a range of optical topics, from shapes and movement, to light and reflection, this cool manual contains templates at the back which reveal answers and help you to create your own astounding illusions.

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In this volume, originally published in 1978, the authors survey the historical and contemporary research literature pertaining to two-dimensional visual-geometric illusions. They bring together much of the known data, summarising and evaluating theories that have been offered to explain these phenomena. Coren and Girgus provide a new conceptual framework that suggest that visual illusions are not unitary phenomena. Within this framework, illusions do not represent a breakdown in normal perceptual processing. Rather, it is proposed that each illusion is produced by a number of mechanisms operating at different levels in the visual information processing system. The book contains an extensive collection of illusion figures. It will be essential reading for all of those concerned with vision and visual perception, since it integrates the study of illusions into the main body of psychological and perceptual theories at the time.

How 33 ancient, familiar and new optical illusions work, with 150 examples.