SEE IT: Viral online optical illusion will change the color of a woman’s face

Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder; this optical illusion gives ample proof.

The online curiosity features an image of a blue face with white hair next to a white panel. Viewers are instructed to stare intently at the center of the face for up to a minute, then look at the blank white page and blink several times.

As if by magic, the blue image will then seem to transform into that of a dark-haired beauty, psychologist Kendra Cherry explained in an essay on About.Com.

Cherry said the phenomenon is called "negative afterimage" and occurs when your eyes become overstimulated through staring and lose their sensitivity.

In that condition, the eyes will lose the ability to pick up the targeted colors. And when a person then looks at a white panel it causes the brain to read the opposite of the color the person was originally looking at, Cherry said.

Thus, the blue face and white hair appear to change colors.

This illusion is a little different than the picture of the white and gold (or was it blue and black?) dress that caused an endless debate on social media earlier this year, attracting millions of eyes and eliciting opinions from the likes of Taylor Swift and Mindy Kaling.

The discrepancy was attributed to the lighting and just how each individual person's brain views color, which caused different people to see varying colors on the garment.

Caitlin McNeill, a 21-year-old Scottish folk singer who started the whole Internet craze on Tumblr, did not keep people in suspense, saying the day after it went viral that the dress was "obviously" black and blue.

Subsequent pictures of the dress snapped in better lighting seem to confirm her statement.

jlandau@nydailynews.com