3-D Anaglyphs

Some experiments with 3-D anaglyphs.

Lone Pine Lake This is a small lake a couple miles up the trail to Mount Whitney in California. It was taken with a normal pocket camera. I just stepped about 2 feet to the side to exaggerate the perspective. Camera tilt was fixed by careful placement of the prints on the scanner bed. Notice that the tree stump in the lower right is in front of the Stereo Window; that is bad. The window is set at the big rock.

3-D pictures:    Red/Blue Anaglyph 952 pixels wide.    Red/Green Anaglyph 952 pixels wide.

How to Do It

I happen to use Paint Shop Pro 7 from Jasc. Yea Photoshop is supposed to be fancier and more expensive but I ain't about to buy (or learn!) yet another software package if I don't have to.

1. Load the two Pictures into Paint Shop Pro 7 and figure out which is left and right.
2. Change the lef t eye picture to red:
   • Convert to grey scale. Depending on the colors you can sometimes get away with skipping this step to produce a full color anaglyph. Large red or blue subjects prevent this from working though. Try it and see.
   • Increase colors to 24 bit so that there are 256 shades each of red, blue, and green again.
   • Change colors to red by deleting the blue and green channels.
3. Change the right eye picture to blue:
   • Convert to grey scale You might as well have used black and white film.
   • Increase colors to 24 bit
   • Change colors to blue or green or maybe greenish blue to match your glasses.
4. Copy and Paste the two pictures as two layers in a new image.
5. Close the first two pictures to free up some memory.
6. Change merge mode of the layers to "lighten". This makes them see-through so you can move them around and see what you are doing at the same time.
7. Align the layers
   • Put on your 3D glasses and move the upper layer around until the two images align correctly.
   • Move up or down to get everything on the same level.
   • Move side to side to set the Stereo Window. Pick a point in the foreground and make the two pictures coincide there; that point is in the same plane as the window.
   • Take care that there is nothing at the edge of the picture that is in front of the Window; it spoils the 3-D and causes insanity. An object may be made to poke through the middle of the Window for effect but most of the stuff should appear to be behind it,
8. Flatten the Layers so that it may be saved in one of the standard formats.
9. Crop the overhanging stuff, and anything else you don't want.
10. Resize if you like. Do this last so that you have the fine details to align to in the previous steps.
11. Draw a frame. Consider drawing a frame around the edge so that the window looks like a window.
12. Save the file. If you use JPEG set the compression low else the 3D effect will be spoiled. GIF only allows 256 colors but after step 2 you are probably not using that many anyway.

Links:

• stereoscopy.com.
  
• Reel 3-D Enterprises (Out of business).