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Analglyph 3D Images - Homemade recipe

3D is not the new technology, the old red-blue anaglyph technology is with us for many years and currently being replaced by new not-so-head-blowing technology in polarized lighting, glasses free parallax barrier and lenticular displays.

I am not a big fan of 3d movies, simply because my eyes and head requires day(s) to recover after it, but 3D photos are very much usefull and I enjoyed them very much in everyday surfing the net (I always have a pair of glasses, usually came with some kids magazines). NASA's  recent Mars robotic exploration has tons of galleries of 3D images that really help understanding the scenery much better. Years ago I learned to create these photos and first instruction I found was at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars3d/3DImages.cfm

3D photo created from two images, angled with a couple of centimeters

The only downside is you have to take two images very quickly, especially when taking photos of children or any moving objects (like the one one above). Nowadays there are 3D cameras with two lenses or cameras with really fast shutter speed that effectively fix the problem.

Viktor couldn't stand still too many seconds in a row and above image is not perfect but still I like it very much. On the other end, what I also found out today is that 3D image is possible to be created from just one single image. The trick is to add different perspective effect to same image and then create it the regular way, like with two. This is the image made in that fashion:

3D photo created from single image

It's not that bad at all! I will definitely want to play around with this when I grab some more free time in the future, even 3D home made videos could be possible to create. I am also very much looking forward to the polarized light 3D technology even though it requires more expensive displays to handle two images in the same time.


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