Oliver Ker Design

Create a 3D Picture from one image

After the latest edition of .net magazine landed on my desk with a free pair of 3D glasses I was inspired to create my own 3D picture.

I used photoshop for this but assume you can do the same with most photo editing software.

Problem

For the best results you need to take a picture of the same subject from two angles that are a few inches apart – I didn’t have the time (or be bothered) to do this, so just used one image.

Choose a picture

Select a picture that has a good depth, I chose a picture I took when we went to see England at Wembley Stadium.

Make it Grey then RGB

1. From the menu change the picture mode to greyscale, you discard the colour information
2. Change the mode back to RBG

Create the Right Eye and move

1. Assume that image you have now will be your Left Eye save a copy, name it Right Eye and open in a new window.
2. In the Left Eye image shift the whole image to the left, you can move is as far or little as you like. There is a limit to how far you can move it so not to far.
3. With the image moved select all (cmd-A) the image and copy it (cmd-C)
4. Open the Right Eye image and in the inspector panel, choose the channels tab and select the red channel, the other channels will turn off. Paste (cmd-V) what you copied from the left eye.
5. Turn back on all the channels and you will notice the red and blue highlight on the picture.

Try it out

You can now put your 3D glasses on and it will make the image appear in 3D.

Extra Depth

To give it extra depth I added a static point of interest.

You can use anything, I used the word Wembley. Create a new layer and in black type anything you want, position it anywhere on the page and when you look at the picture and sway left to right you will notice the picture moving behind the wording.

3d