Make Your Own 3D Images!!

That's right you heard me, or read me right, you too can make your own 3D images. By following this simple tutorial you can enter the self made world of 3D. I know what you're thinking, "Bob that's crazy talk, how can you make your own 3D images?" Well I'll get to that in a moment, but first of all think of the possibilities, one word....... "Weddings", everyone has those ordinary B&W or color photos of that special day, blah, blah blah, how would you like to give something special, a 3D image complete with 3D glasses of the lucky couple sitting by a lake, or a pond, or on a swing, how awesome would that be? My youngest daughter is getting married next year, guess what I'll be getting them?

To start with, take a picture of something, flowers, horses, trees, Yodas, people, whatever you like, now take another picture, this time with the opposite eye, in other words move the camera over, around 3 inches, moving in parallel lines and keeping track of which picture is from the left and which is from the right, you are basically taking stereo images of the subject to combine later in your photo processing software.


Next open your images in your editing software, I have photoshop so I will be using photoshop terms from here on in.

1.Rename your photos, eg. Yoda L, for Yoda left image, and Yoda R, for Yoda right image.

2. Maximize your left image, click on 'Image' on the top toolbar, go to 'Mode' then 'Grayscale', the left image is now Grayscaled.

3. Repeat for the right image.

4. Minimize the right image and maximize the left image, so the left image is active, click on 'Image' on the top of the toolbar once again, go to 'Mode', this time click on 'RGB color', now you have your left image as RGB color and your right image as Grayscale.

5. With the left image active still, go the the bottom right of photoshop, click on the channels tab, next click on the blue channel at the bottom so it is shaded, next with your finger on the shift key click on the green channel, now you will have the blue and green channels highlighted.

6. Minimize the left image now and maximize the right image, with the right image active, click on 'Select' on the top toolbar, select 'All', you will see a dotted line around the whole image, now go to 'Edit' on the top toolbar, then select 'Copy'.

7. Minimize the right image and maximize the left image, with the left image now active go the top toolbar and click on 'Edit' then 'Paste', you have just pasted the left and right images together, if you go to the bottom right where the channels section is and click on the RGB channel you will see a red blue image, isn't this getting exciting?

8. It's almost done now, click on the Red Channel so it is the only channel shaded, now go to the RGB channel and click on the little side box so an eye appears in all the side boxes on all the channels, but only the red channel is shaded, this will allow you to move only the red channel to fine tune the 3D effect.

9. What you have to do now is fine tune the red and blue separation, go to the tool section on the left side and click on the move tool, I wear my 3D glasses for this part, with the move tool click on the composite image and move the red channel until you get the best 3D effect, once you are satisfied, you are done, you may have to crop any red off the image after moving that layer around, then presto, you have your very own 3D image.

If I have totally confused you, just click on the link at the top of this post, it will take you to the tutorial I followed. The guy who does 3D images for the NASA missions wrote it.


Talk about pop a doodle doo, the Moon image above and the Nyiragongo Volcano below are a couple of my favorite NASA 3D images, very cool, they pop right out at you.

So if you really, really, really want to make your own 3D images, I still have some 3D glasses to give away, just email me your address and I will send you a pair.

A late addition to this post.  Ruth one of my readers had commented that she thought I'd be talking about the "Big event", Cern's start up of the LHC, well they did successfully steer a beam around the 27 km loop but the actual smashing of the beams won't occur for a few weeks yet, so no black holes, and they go on to say in the press release that new results won't be appearing for another year, which leads me to believe we probably won't know the exact date they will be up to the  power needed to actually create black holes, kind of keeping us in the dark so to speak.  I will continue to read all the articles I can get my hands on to let you know the current happenings as they occur.