curious how to create your own anaglyph 3D images? Not hard to do if you have some basic tools, photoshop and a good subject to shoot for a 3D image, and a digital camera.
I was attracted to 3D when I was very young, I loved how you could look at something with those glasses and see things jump right off the page. Anaglyph 3D is an evolution from the old Stereoscopic images you may have found in antique stores, but never had a viewer to see them with. The glasses block out color from one eye so you can see a different angle in each eye, creating a parallax, and your mind translates it as a 3D image from a 2D source. 3D images are truly the original “virtual reality”.
Most 3D images from the past were shot with a stereoscopic camera, or a camera with 2 lenses. One lens would shoot for the left eye, and one for the right. Images were usually shot in black and white and printed on color printing paper, but color images could also be used. Here is one of those old cameras:
I always wished I had one of these in the film days, but never acquired one…
Now in the modern digital days there are many options to creating these 3D images and several of them are very expensive stereo cameras (2 lenses) used for augmented reality and 3D mapping. We will not be discussing these here, we are going to explore shooting 3D images with a digital camera, or even with a phone and creating the red/blue effect within photoshop!
The first step to creating a 3D image is to find the proper subject matter. Nobody wants to see a 3D image of a billboard or a poster on a wall, what fun is that? You need to find something with stuff sticking out here and there to make the image interesting. Lots of foreground and background variation, but keep in mind the foreground objects will have the most 3D effect and could be distracting, so try to keep those items around the framing of your image.
Next you will need to take 2 pictures, like the old fashioned cameras did. But since you are probably using a single lens on your camera or phone (multiple lens phone cameras will not work for this), you will need to move the camera slightly to create your second exposure. Very important: since our eyes are arranged horizontally, we also need to make our camera move horizontally or this will not work. Landscape orientated photos work best. 55mm is the average distance between a human’s eyes, so we will need to move the camera 55mm or just over 2 inches. So shoot one image, move the camera then shoot another. It is helpful if you have something to set the camera on, as you want the position of the lens to move just that little bit and not all over the place to keep the 3D effect as accurate as possible. Try keeping the focal plane the same for both shots (try not to rotate the camera when moving it).
So, you got your pictures shot and now you have 2 images. If you could put them side by side, on screen, and close one eye and then switch open eyes really fast this would work great, but nobody I know can do that, so we need to put these images together into one to create the effect. So open both images in photoshop, then drag the background layer from one image on top of the other (while holding shift of course) so you will have an image with both shots in separate layers (you can close the image you dragged from we do not need it anymore). Double click on the background layer, you should now have 2 layers, Layer 0 on the bottom and Layer 1 on the top. One of these will be the left eye shot and one will be the right. If you know which one it which, you only have one more step to create a 3D image. Next step is to click on the top layer (Layer1) and double click on the layer itself and turn off the red channel:
Ok, now for the moment of truth. Slip on your glasses and take a look at your image. Does it look 3D? If you did everything right, it should. Now, if you got your images arranged correctly, things should be jumping out at you, but if you got your images mixed up then things will be jumping back. This is a common problem, even for those who do this often. Even if you keep shooting one side first, sometimes, somehow things get mixed up. But the solution is simple. Click the red layer back on, then move Layer 0 to the top of the layer stack, and then turn off the red channel for that layer. This should fix the backward image.
Black and white images will look great as anaglyph 3D images, but they need to be in RGB color for this to work. Simply desaturate the layers keeping them in RGB. Color image look great as well. Finding the creative balance is all part of the fun. Give it a try sometime!