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What is an anaglyph?

An anaglyph is an image or photograph which shows you an image in 3D with the aid of a pair of special glasses. These have 2 differently colored glasses: red en blue. These glasses seperate the information for the left and right eye. So the goal is to create an image which contains the information for both eyes, like the example below:

Make sure the red glass is in front of the left eye and the blue is infront of the right eye.

Requirements

• (digital)camera
• Object you wish to view in 3D
• 2 photographs
• Photoshop (or similar). This tutorial is based on Photoshop, but any other graphics program that allows you to process the color channels is fine.
• Red/Blue 3D glasses.

What's the process?

Step 1

Take two pictures. One for the left eye and one for the right eye. Using a tripod is probably the best way to go. Setup the camera and make your composition and take the picture. This is the left eye image. Move the tripod a few centimeters to the right (circa 7cm or 3 inches) and take the second picture. This is the image for the right eye. See the schematic below.

              x1
    
              O
    
              x2
    
    
    
          c1     c2
    

O - The object.
c1 and c2 - The spots you place the camera. These will usually be around 6-10cm (2.5-4 inces) appart.
x1 and x2 - The focalpoint. Depending on the effect you wish to achieve, choose a focalpoint. If you pick x1, the object will appear to be in front of the screen. If you pick x2, then the object will appear to be behind the screen. If you put the focal point on the object then the object will appear to intersect the screen itself. With focalpoint I don't mean the where the actual focus lies, but where the lines of view cross from the 2 vantage points.

Below are the 2 photos I used as a starting point.

Stap 2

Open the photo's in Photoshop. Select the first picture (left eye). Change the mode to grayscale (menu: image->mode->grayscale). Change the mode back to RGB (menu: image->mode->RGB color). This will eventually be our 3D picture.

Select the second picture. Change this one to grayscale as well. Select the entire image (CTRL+A) and copy this (CTRL+C). Go back to the first picture. In the layer screen, select the blue channel (CTRL+3).

Paste the copy of the other picture into this channel (CTRL+V). Now select the green channel (CTRL+2) and black it out.

Go back to RGB (CTRL+~). Your 3D anaglyph is now finished. The only thing that remains is finetuning the image and an eventual crop. Finetuning means aligning the colorchannels in such a way that the small details line up. BElow you can see an example of a small problem:

By moving the blue layer a bit we can correct this. The biggest problem is the vertical mis-alignment. This must be as small as possible.

The only thing that's left is saving the image and you're done.

Rinze van Huizen