I was reminded (and inspired) by this site that it is possible to perceive a stereoscopic effect without using special glasses - simply alternating between two slightly different perspectives of the same image is sufficient.

I have no fancy setup or special lens, so everything was done by hand and tweaked using GIMP.

I would take one picture then move the camera slightly to one side (very little - a cm or so was plenty - perhaps too much). Then I would slightly rotate the camera (again, very little).

I then loaded the images into GIMP and overlaid them on two separate layers.

Performed edge detection on both of them and then used the move tool to align horizontal edges (it helps to have some good horizontal edges in the image) - necessary to make the top layer transparent (I used 50% opacity). I needed to do this because shifting the camera by hand meant that the images didn't overlap perfectly. You only need to move one image, not both.

Once I knew how much to move / shift an image, I went back to the original overlaid images and moved it by the same amount.

Then I cropped, the image. Resized. Converted it to an indexed image. And, finally saved as a GIF file.

Since I had two layers, GIMP asks if I wanted to flatten them (merge then together) or export them as an animated GIF. I chose animated GIF, set the delay to 50ms and the option to loop forever.

Looking these over, I think it is important to pick a reference point that remains in the centre of both pictures. When you take the first picture, note where the centre is, then, when you shift and angle the camera, make sure the centre point is the same.

Actually worked out quite well.

(My apologies, these are quite large images - the smallest a little over 500K and the largest a little over 1M)

My second attempt at 3D pictures. My favourite, marred only by one of the images being blurry.

My first attempt and proof of concept shots.

What happens when you move the camera too much.

This one is quite nice.

My fourth attempt. I focussed on aligning lines at the back of the image.

The same image as above, except I aligned the image based on lines at the front of the image.

Comments

jassy

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nice :) i better show this to my bf who is into photography :)

Sunday 06 March 2011, 07:07

richard

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While a bit tricky, it is not impossible to do. If he is into photography, then he may enjoy trying it himself.

Tuesday 08 March 2011, 06:34

anglophilegonewrong

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This is SO clever! I love it. I never thought of doing anything like that!

Monday 07 March 2011, 18:00

richard

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Well, first off, you have to actually know it can be done. Actually doing it is fairly straightforward - a bit tricky, but still reasonably straight forward.

I would recommend trying it with some of your favourite landmarks in London: (1) take a photo, (2) move slightly to the left or right (remember your eyes are only 3cm or so apart - so a little movement is in order, (3) rotate the camera a bit, so the centre remains the same in both images, (4) load them into GIMP (or Photo Shop) and then carefully align them, (5) finally save the image as an animated GIF.

Tuesday 08 March 2011, 06:41

Ege

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At http://www.moillusions.com/2007/07/stereo-animated-3d-illusions.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.moillusions.com/2007/07/stereo-animated-3d-illusions.html too, this is done quite nicely.

Sunday 08 May 2011, 19:07

richard

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Cool! Some very nice ones there.

Monday 09 May 2011, 08:19

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