Imagination Gallery - Producing Anaglyph Images

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PRODUCING ANAGLYPH IMAGES
by:
Bob Mannle - 1945-2005

All images are to be viewed with Red/Left and Blue/Right 3-D glasses.

I often get letters from folks requiring information about the computer production of anaglyph images. Of course there's various software packages available for this specific purpose, but in my opinion, absolutely nothing can compete with the quality and control Adobe Photoshop can offer. I mention Adobe Photoshop because it's the software I use, but virtually any other software that splits the image into RGB channels, and allows you to combine them... should work.

REQUIREMENTS:

A pair (2) stereo images.

I suggest they be converted to Photo CD, or you can scan them. The primary concern here is to be sure that they have the same dimensions, and color balance. They both should also be aligned horizontaly (one should not be rotated). Vertical alignment is also important but you can take care of this with your software.

Adobe Photoshop or similar software

Having the ability to split, swap, and/or merge channels is mandatory. Additional color correction, level adjustment, and positioning control is also important.

3-D Glasses

For the computer monitor I find that red and blue glasses work the best. Make sure that when you put them on that the red lens is covering your left eye.

LET'S GET STARTED:

Once in Photoshop bring up your stereo pair of images and align them on the screen side by side so you can cross-eye view them and see the 3-D effect. Convert them to grayscale images, and then convert them back to RGB images. Do any level adjustment s, brightness or contrast adjustments at this time... equally to both images.

Using the left image on the screen, select the RED channel. Do a SELECT ALL, and then CUT the image. This process basically selects, and removes the red channel from the image.

Now using the right image on the screen... select the RED channel, do a SELECT ALL, and then COPY.

Going back to the left screen image, still the RED channel... do a PASTE.

This will then paste the red channel of the right screen image into the red channel of the left screen image.

Now just select the RGB channel indicator to view your anaglyph image.

MANIPULATING THE IMAGE IN SPACE
Now that the anaglyph image is produced it may be extending out in front of your monitor too far, or may be back too far. Using the RED channel again... do a SELECT ALL and use the FILTER/OFFSET function to move the RED channel to the right or left. Moving it to the right will bring the image toward you, and of course moving it to the left will push it back. Crop the image accordingly once the process is complete.

FULL COLOR ANAGLYPHS
This demonstration was done using grayscale images mainly because 99% of color images that you will want to use for color anaglyphs will not work very well. A color anaglyph must be comprised of color images that do not have any highly saturated blue s or reds. Even then... yellows, oranges and greens do a pretty good job of creating visual problems. Therefore you may want to do some color manipulation prior to conversion. Basically you will be working with a very monotone image... almost like a grayscale. The process for color anaglyphs is exactly the same as described above.

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