This is the penultimate post to compliment Queen’s Park Camera Club President’s Night presentation which I gave on the 30th of March 2017.
Digital 3D Anaglyph Tutorial
When looking for a scene which will make a good 3D image, you abandon the normal rules of composition, you are looking for interest that will be created by the impression of depth more than placement of objects on thirds etc.
You need to take two pictures, one for your left eye and one for your right eye. You need to remember which is which later on when creating the individual layers in photoshop, therefore it is good practice to always shoot them in the same order. I always shoot the left eye and then the right eye image. I do it in this order so that when I view my RAW images in Lightroom’s filmstrip that the first image I see on the strip is the left eye and the image immediately to the right is the for the right eye.
The big question is how far apart should the two images be taken. I dare say that there is a complex mathematical formula to get this right but as a rule of thumb, if the object yo u are photographing is very close move a very small distance and if it is very far away move a large distance – it’s as technical as that.
If you are editing your RAW images, always remember to apply the same adjustments to both images or else you get some headache inducing effects. I usually do this by adjusting the left image and then use the SYNC function in Lightroom to apply the same edit to the right image.
Once edited save both your images as JPEGs and open them in Photoshop.
To follow the tutorial you can use these right and left images shot from the rooftop of Glassford Street Car Park.
Now the Photoshop bit…
- Open a new Photoshop document and place the left eye image as the base layer. Call this layer “Left”.
- Add a new layer and fill it with red (RGB 255,0,0). Call this layer “RED”.
- Change the “RED” layer blending mode to MULTIPLY.
- Now create a new layer from the visible layers (Keyboard shortcut CNTRL/ALT/SHIFT/E).
- Call this new layer “LEFT RED”.
That’s the left image sorted.
- Create a new layer and paste in the right image. Call this layer “RIGHT”.
- Create a new layer and fill it with a pale blue (RBG 66,152,155 works just fine). Call this layer “BLUE”.
- Change the “BLUE” layer blending mode to “MULTIPLY”
- Now create a new layer from the visible layers (Keyboard shortcut CNTRL/ALT/SHIFT/E)
- Call this layer “RIGHT BLUE”
- Change the “RIGHT BLUE” layer blending mode to “SCREEN”
That’s the right image sorted.
- Now switch off the visibility of all the layers except “LEFT RED” and “RIGHT BLUE” – Hey presto – you now have a 3D image!
But at this point it might not look very three dimensional.
To make the 3D work better you need to align the images to each other. This is a bit tricky to explain so stick with me.
Select the “RIGHT BLUE” layer and select a point I the image you want to be crystal clear and align that point in both images, everything in front of that point will project out of the screen towards you and everything behind that point will recede into the distance.
Using this technique you can change the 3D effect by moving the point of image alignment around. Depending upon the scene, how close to the camera foreground objects were and how big a distance you placed between left and right images you will find that making big changes to the point of alignment may cause you to lose the 3D illusion.
If you want to see more fantastic examples of 3D Anaglyph photography check out this link to a Dutch photographer o Flickr:
Hope you enjoying trying out 3D anaglyph photography.
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