P3D Re: 3D Formats: anaglyphs

[Tony Alderson <aifxtony@xxxxxxx>]

I really don't want to dig through the digests for quotes, so let me
share some of my opinions.

Making anaglyphs is an art of compromise. This is especially true of
color anaglyphs, and painfully true of process color (CMYK) anaglyphs,
whether line art, grayscale or polychromatic.

Commercial stereoscopy is also an art of compromise. There are politics,
personalities, agendas and priorities. And commercial art is just
that--commercial--and hard-nosed business sense reigns. The
stereographer navigating this minefield is on a perlious path indeed.

For it is impossible to make any anaglyph that will please everyone,
especially those in the "stereo community." Many, many stereographers
dislike anaglyphs intensely. They cringe at the rivalrous bombardment,
they are annoyed by the lack of color fidelity, distracted by the common
ghosting problems, and offended by the generally non-serious attitude.
These are, of course, significant problems in anaglyph transmission.

It is possible to make an anaglyph without ghosting, but you won't
satisfy those bothered by rivalry. Even if you get a tolerable color
image with the glasses off, with the glasses on the color will be less
than true. And so forth. Thus the experienced anaglyphist steels himself
for the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."

It is not possible, however, to make a process color anaglyph that
doesn't ghost significantly. You can get fair cancellation on the
magenta/yellow (i.e., red) side, but there is no color filter on earth
that will cancel process cyan. One can try to "pinch back" the cyan
halftone to lighten the cyan ghost, but it really doesn't accomplish
much but to lower the contrast and, in polychromatics, destroy the color
rendition. Besides, it requires a high degree of control over the
printing process which is usually not practical or possible.

With process colors, then, one must resort to various tricks, such as
ignoring the window and aligning on the main subject. Busy subjects help
greatly in hiding ghosting. Finally, one must minimize the on-page
separation, and utilize non-stereo depth cues to help fool the viewer
into perceiving more 3D than is actually seen. BUT...minimized
separations will tend to cardboard. 

You can monkey with the color channels to reduce the flashing colors of
poly anaglyphs, but this corrupts the color rendition even more, and
will be generally unacceptable to clients, who want the color to look
good without the glasses, and are more than willing to accept minimal
3D. It often seems to me that to many, anaglyph is more about flashing
colors than stereo!

So, you pays yer money and takes yer chances. You can't make a "great"
color anaglyph, the best you can hope for is "pretty good." In fact, it
takes a minor miracle to get one that is "good enough."

So why do we "put up" with this imperfect system? Well, if you restrict
yourself to hand-viewers, you'll be lucky to reach a few hundred people
with your art. If you branch out to slide projection, you might reach a
few thousand in a lifetime. If you try field sequential, well, up into
six figures these days, but still a limited, and affluent, audience. SI
reached MILLIONS, from all walks of life, all over the planet in a
single shot. Now that's some cultural impact.

And for whatever flaws, the issue was entertaining and "good enough."
Y'all shouldn't worry about presentations of "bad" 3-D: stereographers
have been regularly shooting themselves in the feet for 170 years now,
we're still limping along about as well if we hadn't been loaded.
Anaglyphs continue along because they are affordable, efficient, and
(like Windows), good enough. Some of us even think they're fun.

I've been hearing about the Next Best Thing for a long time now, but
Heaven on Earth still seems a long ways away. I figure I'll do the best
I can in this brief moment of conciousness in vastness of space-time
with the tools I have available. Sure, earth is filled with plague, war
and poverty. Sure, life is short and brutal and tragic.

It's a wonderful life. Better this than to be no more than a rock.

Tony Alderson