Stereograms
My brother and I loved our Viewmaster when we were kids (I've still got it). Decades later, I bought a lovely stereoview slide of the victorian Cliff House for my San Franciscana collection. Over time, I bought more San Francisco stereoview slides and wrote a SF stereoviews web page to display them. Much later, in early 2011, I realized I could make stereograms without a special camera from pairs of photos taken at slightly offset positions, provided the subject remains stationary. I wrote a program to construct stereograms: from a pair of photos and positioning data, it builds an anaglyph stereogram, a reversed stereogram, or a normal stereogram. It's simpler than you might think.
The Wikipedia stereoscopy article gives general information on stereo imaging. You can view paired images using a stereoscope, or you can combine left/right images into a single anaglyph image and view it using simple red/cyan glasses, or you can view paired images without using any device (freeviewing). There are two ways to freeview: place the images in normal left-right orientation and focus past the image (wall-eyed or parallel viewing), or place the images in reversed right-left orientation and focus in front of the image (crosseyed viewing). Freeviewing is nicely described here, with simple illustrations and good viewing advice; I won't repeat it here.
This page shows a few of my stereograms, as both anaglyph (red/cyan) and reversed (crosseyed) images. I find reversed freeviewing more natural than parallel freeviewing, so I typically do not bother to generate parallel image pairs.
Click on any image to enlarge, then use the back arrow on your browser to return.
To start a slideshow, click here for anaglyph images or here for crosseyed images.
Anaglyph | Description | Location | Date | Crosseyed |
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Orchid | San Francisco | 2/04/11 | ![]() |
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Back yard | San Francisco | 2/04/11 | ![]() |
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Driveway | Arnold | 2/04/11 | ![]() |
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Sawyer Camp Trail Crystal Springs Reservoir |
San Mateo | 2/13/11 | ![]() |
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Crystal Springs Reservoir | San Mateo | 2/13/11 | ![]() |
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City Hall | San Francisco | 2/13/11 | ![]() |
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Ol' Beth Angels Camp Museum |
Angels Camp | 12/17/11 | ![]() |
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Carriage Angels Camp Museum |
Angels Camp | 12/17/11 | ![]() |
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Water wheel Angels Camp Museum |
Angels Camp | 12/17/11 | ![]() |
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Mining & ranching building Angels Camp Museum |
Angels Camp | 12/17/11 | ![]() |
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Cacti | Davenport | 1/07/12 | ![]() |
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Pumpkin at Matt's | Stanford | 10/31/12 | ![]() |
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Pumpkin at Matt's | Stanford | 10/31/12 | ![]() |
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Rip Van Winkle Gardens | Jefferson Island, LA | 2/19/13 | ![]() |
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Kate Shepard House | Mobile, AL | 2/21/13 | ![]() |
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Newtown Creek Greenpoint |
Brooklyn, NY | 12/01/13 | ![]() |
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Armajani: Whitney Bridge | Minneapolis | 7/24/14 | ![]() |
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Armajani: Whitney Bridge | Minneapolis | 7/24/14 | ![]() |