Are you among 1% who can see the hidden celebrity? Tricks to help you see them in this black and white image

This image might look like a spotty black and white grid, but there’s actually a famous face hiding in it.

It’s one of the latest optical illusions to delight internet users, but apparently only 1% of people can correctly identify the person hiding in plain sight amongst the monochrome dots.

So, the question is can you spot whose famous face it is?

Here’s everything you need to know about this optical illusion, including tricks for how to spot the star and, of course, who that star is.

What does the optical illusion show?

This image is a new take on the famous Magic Eye illusions, which used swirls of dots or lines to hide a 3D image.

At first glance, the optical illusion shows a white grid filled with black dots.

A closer inspection, however, reveals that there is a portrait of a celebrity concealed within the dots.

It sounds simple, but as with all illusions it’s not. It’s not obvious at all which star it shows - and the longer you look at it the more it can confuse your eyes and your brain.

What tricks are there to tell who is hiding in the image?

If you are struggling to see the famous face hidden in the image there are a few things you can do to help you see it more clearly.

One possible way of making the portrait present itself more clearly is shaking the device you are viewing it on, or looking at the image at an angle.

The most effective way of being able to see the celebrity is looking closely at the image while moving away from your phone or computer.

The further away you get, the clearer the famous face should become.

If you still suck, we’ll give you one more clue: this late star was widely regarded as one of the most significant and influential figures in the music industry.

Whose famous face is hiding in the image?

The famous face hiding in the image is the King of Pop - Michael Jackon.

Now you know the answer, try looking at the image again and he should appear more readily to your eye.

How does the illusion work?

Doctor Gustav Kuhn, a psychologist and human perception expert at Goldsmiths University in London, told The Sun that the visual puzzle is the result of how our brains process information.

He compared it to a similar monochrome-grid illusion that obscures an image of a panda.

He said: "Our eyes encode vast amounts of messy sensory information, and our brain uses clever tricks to disambiguate this information to try and make sense of what it is we are looking at.

"What you see is results of vast amounts of neural computation, mixed with a bit of guesswork.

"For example, when you stare at a bunch of trees, you can interpret this as a forest, or a tree. What you are seeing depends on which aspect of the scene you are focusing on.

"In the panda illusion, information is encoded at different scales, and depending on which scale you focus on, either the trees or the forest, you will either see a bunch of lines, or the bigger picture – the panda."