P3D Re: making stereographs from anaglyphs

[Larry Berlin <lberlin@xxxxxxxxx>]

>Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999
>From: Donna Keas <rondonna@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>...............
>Hello all,
>I know that many of you are familiar with changing side by side stereo
>views into anaglyphs, but I was wondering if any of you had experimented
>in doing the reverse process. Many of Pathfinders most detailed and
>largest  images were released as anaglyphs. I wasn't happy with the
>small, out of focus side by side stereographs I saw on the JPL site, so
>I figured out how to extract the two stereo views from good quality
>anaglyphs.  You can see an example at this URL >
>http://www.3dviewmax.com/mars.htm
>


****  Yes, I've done that, with NASA images too! In the one's I did, the two
images as grayscale stereo pairs were very different from each other. They
had extreme imbalance in brightness. One looked out of focus and blurry. The
other sharply detailed with rich shadowy features. I tweaked the brightness,
contrast and a couple other things before putting them back together as an
anaglyph. It was greatly improved in terms of stereo viewing. I have no idea
why the two images were so vastly different to start with. My guess is they
are separate images added together with NO thought to making them work
better together, despite the intention of providing a (singular) stereo view.

It was interesting to notice how the mind integrated the blurry and the
detailed. There was a recent thread on intentional misfocusing of two lenses
in cameras. That image in it's original condition provided an extreme
example. I believe it's somewhere on the APOD site but I don't have the
specific URL. If someone's interested I can look it up.

I've done this process for another reason... When I got LCS glasses, very
few people had full color stereo JPS images on their websites, so I couldn't
view their images with the glasses. When I found an interesting anaglyphic
image, I downloaded it to my hard drive. Later I extracted the two images as
grayscale and created a side by side  JPS file which I could view with the
glasses. It greatly improved the viewing experience. 

I find I enjoy anaglyphics more now that they are merely one of the options
instead of the only option. I reach quite often for the red/blue ones as
opposed to picking up the LCS ones. Often I compare the two views and check
to see which ones work in color anaglyphs vs. gray ones. These are just
extensions of the foundation... freeviewing, mostly cross-eyed.

Larry Berlin

Email: lberlin@xxxxxxxxx
http://www.sonic.net/~lberlin/
http://3dzine.simplenet.com/


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