P3D anaglyphs / monitor color

[boris@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Boris Starosta)]

Aah, the joy of the frustration of stereo!

After having received several emails on the dubious quality of my TrueColor
anaglyphs, I sought out and discovered the problem.  I tend to forget this,
and take for granted the use of a color balanced monitor.  As a designer,
for my work color calibration is important, and so my monitor is balanced
with the ambient light in my office.  This is lit with rather "cool" low
wattage incandescents - probably in the 3000K range.

Most monitors come out of the factory box balanced to a ridiculously high
color temperature.  I mean, they must be manufactured on a planet orbiting
a neutron star, these things are so BLUE.  Gotta be 10,000k or 20,000k or
more!  To cut them _some_ slack, I think they do it to make the picture
tube appear brighter.  Balancing the color of a monitor with software, as I
do, tends to darken it quite a bit.  I think the red phosphors that are
commonly used in monitors are just not very bright.

What I've discovered is that a relatively reddish cast on the monitor, as I
have it, does not only improve color matching with printed output, but also
happens to work really well with all kinds of anaglyphs, because it makes
the red and blue images more in balance with each other.  It does not
matter whether it is a "color" anaglyph, or a "grayscale" anaglyph.  A
properly balanced monitor will show less color rivalry across the entire
density range of an anaglyph image.

The drawback of which I am now reminded is that most people do not have
color balanced monitors.  Their monitors are so blue, that these fine
nuances in my new color anaglyphs are totally obliterated.  On such a
monitor, you don't get a good anaglyph image no matter what you do, because
the blue image will always be so much brighter than the red image.  On such
a monitor, my improvements change the appearance of an anaglyph from
dreadful to awful.  It means there is not much I can do for those who are
operating on a non-color balanced monitor - i.e. a lot of people.

On Macs, any monitor can be balanced using a utility called "Gamma" written
by Thomas Knoll, and distributed along with Photoshop for many years.
Perhaps a similar utility exists on the PC/Wintel platform.

Trying to display stereo just presents one frustrating hurdle after
another, doesn't it?!

Boris

Boris Starosta            boris@xxxxxxxxxxxx
                          http://www.starosta.com
usa 804 979 3930          http://www.starosta.com/3dshowcase



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