Make your own DIRDS

[P3D Paul S. Boyer <boyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It is not that difficult to make double-image random dot stereograms.
 I have been doing that for years on the Macintosh.  Al;l you need is
a good graphics program.  Now that Intel-based computers have at
least partly caught up by imitating the Mac GUI with Windoze, it
should be possible also on an Intel-based computer.
First step, make a mess of random dots.  Any way will work.  Tryusing
the spray-can tool, or some graphics programs have a little hurricane
tool which messes things up.
Once you have your square field of random dots, the next step is to
select an interestingly shaped area of the field, and make a copy of
the dots in that area.  Move that area to one side (constraining to
horizontal), and you have created your second chip of the pair.
You can view the pair by free-viweing right on the screen: in fact,
youcan free-view as you make the thing.
I have printed the results by laser-printed, and photgraphed them,
mounting the results in Realist mounts to show along with regular
stereo slides.  People get the RDS image much faster this way, and
are usually amazed, and want to know how the thing works.
I have not tried this with Photoshop, but I bet it has some
capabilities which would be fun to use.  PhotoShop is available on
the Windoze machines in a version identical with the Mac version,
except that the Mac version has a better GUI and is *prettier*!

Have fun!

Paul S. Boyer  [Known for being irritatingly biased toward
Macintosh.]  <boyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>


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