Etude 1 - Technical Research

Right, how does an Anaglyph work?

When you put on the coloured glasses to view the anaglyph the red lens is usually over the left eye and the cyan over the right. The red lens in the glasses make the red areas in the image appear as white and the blue areas as black. In the case of the cyan lens the opposite occurs, it views the blue areas as white and the red areas as black. Then because of the displacement in the images the the lenses makes each eye see a slightly different image the brain then calculates and puts the images together causing the picture to appear 3D.
Technically the only problem with the pictures is that due to the difference in frequencies of the two colours entering the eye, if you just have a standard set of the cardboard red and blue lens glasses, the cyan image appears to be strong and clearer than the red. The red image can sometimes appear to be quite blurry in comparison. More recent glasses have had an slight colour adjustment done on the blue lenses to allow a certain percentage of red colour frequency through in order to combat this problem.

Why Red and Cyan lens?

The reason for the usage of Red and Cyan for the lens and the images is because they are at opposite ends of the colour spectrum scale therefore the colour frequency wavelengths cancel each other out cleanly. If you were to put a different colour lens in such as yellow instead of red there would be a degree of colour from the Cyan image that would get through, so the areas that were Cyan would not appear as black as they would with the Red lens. I would be interested to try this out in order to see whether it makes a more interesting outcome.

So what happens when the image you want to view has a large red or blue content? My assumption is that the area looks as though it is invisible, whilst I'm sure this isn't the idea for conventional work I think that it may make the imagery quite interesting and experimental, I will produce a picture and see how it goes!

Etude 1 - Research 3D anaglyphs

Initially I'm going to explore just trying to get an anaglyph produced and I will concentrate on the other issue of producing an art piece that is viable in 2D and 3D in due course.

I've found a tutorial about producing anaglyphs using photoshop at
http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/photoshop/ht/3danaglyph.htm
I'm so excited by the idea of producing a 3D picture I'm going to get stuck in and experiment, I will fill in the technical background of what causes the image to appear 3D in due course. In the meantime I also need to buy or make a pair of glasses for viewing my work through.

I think making a picture using Photoshop will be my first port of call as it is the easiest method for me at this stage. I have a digital camera which I will use.
Here are the instructions I found.

1. Obtain two stereo pair photos. (I often use two disposable cameras mounted on a board side by side and with an ever so slight convergence towards the horizon. Remember you're mimicking your eyes and your eyes always end up focusing on something--each eye can never look straight ahead separately. I find the best anaglyphs work with a very low level of convergence.(This is usually evident by the amount of red/cyan silhouetting around objects in a scene.)

I will use one camera and mark it's position on a piece of paper. For the left hand photo, as you are looking through the camera, I will stick a small wedge on the front of the camera to the bottom right corner to make allowance for the convergence mentioned above. Then for the right hand picture I will move the camera to the second marked area and change the wedge to the front bottom left of the camera.

2. Scan each photo separately. (I would recommend desaturating them to make them B&W.)

3. Open left photo in Photoshop (just like your eye, the left photo is identifiable by the fact that objects within the scene are more to the right when overlayed with the other eye.)

4. From the color selector, select color #00FFFF (bright turquoise). The equivalent of this in RGB is R-000 G-255 B-255.(This is also called cyan).

5. Create a layer above the left photo and fill it with this color.

6. Duplicate this layer and go to Image > Adjust > Invert. This will change the color of this duplicate cyan layer to a red color (direct opposite). In RGB the color created will be R-255 G-000 B-000.

7. Open the right photo and copy it, close it and in the left photo (the one to which you added the colored layers), paste it below the red layer.

Now position the 4 layers as follows: The bottom is your right photo. Above it is the red layer. Above it is the left photo and above this is the cyan layer.

If you wish to check the alignment of the two photo pairs you can turn off red and cyan layers and adjust the opacity of the left photo to 50%. Make sure both photos are on the same vertical plane and shift up/down appropriately. When finished change the opacity of the left photo back to 100%.

Turn on the cyan layer and change the transfer mode to screen.

Merge the cyan and left photo layers together. You should now see a very abstract cyan tinted image that will be hard to distinguish in areas.

Turn off this new cyan layer.

Turn the red and right photo layers back on and change the red transfer mode to screen. (Note: You don't need to merge these two if you don't want to.) Again you'll see an abstract red image similar to the cyan before.

Turn on the new merged cyan/left photo layer and change the transfer mode to multiply. Put on glasses (red on left, cyan on right) and you should now see the anaglyph.

Let's see how it goes!

Here are the two original photos prior to processing:-



Below is the anaglyph. In this test run I used slightly too much convergence, therefore, I had to slide the photos within photoshop to correct positions, leaving areas of the photos that didn't overlap, I cropped the piece accordingly.



Here's another test I did I think this one a lot more effective because the sofa is a cleaner, larger focal point. I also adjusted the distance between the overlaid images.



I don't think either of these pieces would work as a solely 2D piece therefore I will carry on experimenting, I may experiment with some moving footage as well which is just for fun.
I think it might be interesting in due course to explore the process of overlapping other anaglyphs within this etude. The overlap idea I've had is to take a pair of photos of from one direction, then moving round the items and take another pair of photos placing the second set over the first set once both have been merged and converted to red and cyan. I though I could process this up to 4 sets of pair images so from front, left, right and rear. I think this may produce something that will be interesting in 2D and 3D. Because it is an experiment I will produce each anaglyph separately and then merge them together in Photoshop a bit at a time. I think the outcome will be interesting. Hopefully this piece may appeal as modern piece of contemporary art for a couple who like a minimalist living environment.
I think I will use still life for this overlap idea as it's a simple. I will get a series of organic items such a fruit and take photos accordingly.

Etude 1 - Research 3D film/imagery

I've decided as one of my studies I will research how to create 3D film/anaglyph stills.
I was a child growing up in the 70's/80's and we were really fascinated by the seeming simplistic concept of the red and blue/green glasses (anaglyph) that help you see 3D images. My first real clear memory is of the free cardboard glasses that you got on cereal packets along with a 3D picture image to look at. The specific film promotion I'm thinking of was Jaws 3D, whilst I wasn't old enough at the time to see the film the visual idea has obviously lodged itself in my brain. I have never really stopped to think about how this kind of image is produced and I'm hoping it will be straightforward enough for me to research and maybe produce a still image or 10 sec moving image.
The purpose of this etude is for the sake of general artistic exploration, I'm not intenting to produce a masterpiece however it would be nice to produce something artistic. I would like it if I could produce something that could be a piece of viable art in 2D or in 3D with the coloured specs on. The reason for this is that if I was a commercial artist I would like to sell work I do and I think there is some limitation to producing just 3D work that requires the specs to look good.

Below is a picture of the great glasses you could get for free on cereal packets:-


http://www.jfedor.org/red-blue-quake2/red-blue-glasses.jpg

So how is it done? How do the coloured glasses produce the illusion of depth?

3D Hybrids Mini Projects Initial Brainstorming

I've now had my first session of 3D Hybrids and I feel a lot clearer on what needs to be achieved throughout this module. I think the best way for me to proceed is to brainstorm and get a few ideas down for my 4 mini projects to see what I would like to explore further.
My only reservation about this module is how difficult it will be to choose the research topics for the mini modules because you only really know how vast the subject is when you've started researching. I guess we'll only find out in due course!

Here are a couple of early project ideas of interest:-

Holograms
3D film/glasses - anaglyphs