Re: Printing anaglyph 3D

[T3D Dave Worrell <dworrell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Sam Wang >> has anyone printed 3D images from Photoshop 
>to a color printer...?  ... it should be easy to make 
>pretty good hardcopies that require only red/green or
>red/blue glasses to see. ...

Sam, I've played around with both an HP Paintjet and Epson Stylus Pro XL
with mixed results. I've mostly done stereo-pairs for cross or parallel
viewing. The dot patterns don't match exactly but I view them (for limited
periods) without discomfort (but  does anybody ever really look at an
image long enough to cause discomfort?) I have done some anaglyph
conversions but the printer's output seemed muddy through red/blue glasses
- perhaps the monitor and printer have to be calibrated to the glasses
(cheap paper cutouts mailed out by Sun computer systems in a web-promo
about year ago). I find that the glasses work well enough on the monitor -
but not as well with printouts.

I have found that the "photo quality" output claimed by Epson to be
somewhat exaggerated. The results - using their ink and their "special"
paper at 720 dpi are excellent, but not "photographic" (unless one is in
the habit of using 400 speed film pushed several stops). And I'm too cheap
to buy their "special" paper and use up more of their ink, so I end up
printing most work at 360 dpi on coated color inkjet paper with pleasant
results (at half the price or better).

Last Christmas I had a gas scanning ornaments on my ScanJet (with the
object-shift method) and printing them out - I liked the stereo-pairs
better than the anaglyph. I never did get a satisfactory color anaglyph
and Christmas ornaments loose some of their charm in b&w.

If you work with color anaglyphs and have good results I'd like to hear
about it - keep us posted.

On a related note - has anybody used the transparency adapter sold by HP
for their ScanJets? I can't afford to invest in a dedicated slide scanner
(Nikon CoolScan etc.) but have a hard time believing the ScanJet could
really do a decent job with a slide.

Dave Worrell (dworrell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Publications Technician - Alaska Section of Epidemiology


------------------------------