How to Make 3D images –Delta High School

What are 3-D photos?

Before we get started, we figured it would be good to explain why 3-D photos work.

Humans over time have evolved with many capabilities which offer an advantage over non- humans (at least for now) opposable thumbs for gripping stuff, big brains for figuring out stuff, and Binocular vision for seeing two points of view at the same time. This allows us to perceive depth (i.e. see things in three dimensions). The ability to tell if a tree branch is 3 feet or 3 inches away is pretty important, as is being able to tell if that lion is 30 yards or 30 feet away. Both our eyes are on the front of our faces and each see a slightly different view of the same thing. Close one eye, then close the other, you'll notice there's a slightly different view of the same thing. Our brains put these together so get a 3-D image of our surroundings.

Anaglyphs, the type of 3-D photos we're going to make, do the same thing by tricking our eyes into doing the same thing they normally do, just with a flat picture. The anaglyph is a single image (usually black and white) that has red/blue "outlines" on it which, when viewed with 3-D glasses, appears to jump out at you. The image gets processed so each eye sees a slightly different view and our brain combines them to give the effect of depth perception.

How to make one! First take 2 images, one with the camera to the left of the subject, then to the right. The amount you move the camera depends on how far you are from the subject, the farther you are the greater the distance you want between the right and left images.

Taking the photos

Now this is the most important part of the how-to: you're going to need to take two pictures of your subject/scene. The first and second picture should be at the same exact level (height) and only one to two inches apart. We're basically going to reproduce what your eye would normally see. If the images are taken too close or too far, the final image won't look 3-D.

It takes a few times to get the best images, but with digital photography you're not wasting film, so we usually take a few dozen. It's usually best to be 10 to 15 feet from the subject and to have a few objects like people or robots to give the photo depth. Outside photos tend to look the best. If you have a tripod to keep the camera level that'll help out, also be careful not to turn the camera in on the second photo, each one should be parallel like your eyes. If you're taking pictures of people, make sure they stay perfectly still for each photo (for this reason, we prefer robots).

When we make these 3-D, we convert some of them to grayscale images, while you don't need to do this, they tend to look better. If you want to shoot images and plan to keep them color, you'll be able to tweak the images in the 3-D application. Just to recap...

1. Find a subject that will be still, and has foreground and background objects to give the photo depth. 2. Take the photo 10 to 15 feet away from the main subject. 3. Move the camera (not you) one to two inches to the right or left, at the same level. If you camera has a viewfinder that helps too. 4. We usually take a photo, move to left on the second one to keep it simple. 5. Take lots of photos, it's only electrons.

Convert both files to grayscale (this usually makes the 3-D effect "pop" more) Image > Mode > Grayscale.

Go back to the left image and put it in RGB mode (Image > Mode > RGB).

Go to Window > Channels and select the Green and Blue Channels (Shift + Click). The Image should turn blue-ish.

Go to the right image, and go to Edit > Select All (Command + A) then Edit > Copy (Command + C). Go back to the left image, and click Edit > Paste (Command + V). Then Click the RGB Color Channel in the Channel Window. The image should now have Red and Blue colors.

Click the Red Channel in the Channels Window, then Click the "Move Tool" in the Tool palette, move the image to align the 2 images over each other. You can use the arrow on click and drag it with the mouse, now is a good time to put on the 3-D glasses, once you line it up properly it will appear 3-D, if there is extra image information crop the image, then save it.

That is it!