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
	Orchid	San Francisco	2/04/11
	Back yard	San Francisco	2/04/11
	Driveway	Arnold	2/04/11
	Sawyer Camp Trail Crystal Springs Reservoir	San Mateo	2/13/11
	Crystal Springs Reservoir	San Mateo	2/13/11
	City Hall	San Francisco	2/13/11
	Ol' Beth Angels Camp Museum	Angels Camp	12/17/11
	Carriage Angels Camp Museum	Angels Camp	12/17/11
	Water wheel Angels Camp Museum	Angels Camp	12/17/11
	Mining & ranching building Angels Camp Museum	Angels Camp	12/17/11
	Cacti	Davenport	1/07/12
	Pumpkin at Matt's	Stanford	10/31/12
	Pumpkin at Matt's	Stanford	10/31/12
	Rip Van Winkle Gardens	Jefferson Island, LA	2/19/13
	Kate Shepard House	Mobile, AL	2/21/13
	Newtown Creek Greenpoint	Brooklyn, NY	12/01/13
	Armajani: Whitney Bridge	Minneapolis	7/24/14
	Armajani: Whitney Bridge	Minneapolis	7/24/14