Creating 3-D Stereo Images of Your Marscape

The wonderful 3-D stereo images from the Mars Pathfinder have reintroduced the public to a viewing technique that was developed many years ago. Perhaps you once viewed a film in a theater through blue-red glasses and the images appeared to exist in 3-D. Anaglyph images make use of our binocular vision to create the perception of depth. To learn more about the science behind anaglyph images, go to the Lunar and Planetary Institute site - Guide to Stereo Images.

If you are participating in the Red Rover, Red Rover project, you now can have your students create their own 3-D stereo images of views from their simulated Marscape.


Hardware and Software Needs


Instructions for Creating Anaglyph Images

1. Take two pictures of a section of the Marscape with your QuickCam, moving the camera approximately 1-2 inches between shots.

2. Convert pictures to grayscale ( unless your camera is b/w ) and save in PICT format.

3. Open BOTH pictures in NIH Image.

4. Go to Stacks menu and select Windows to Stack.

5. From Stacks menu select Add Slice.

6. Use pallet to color new slice all black.

7. From Stacks select RGB to 8-bit Color.

8. Your new anaglyph image should appear.

9. View new image through blue-red glasses, always looking through red lens with left eye.

10. Your new 3-D image can now be saved in gif or jpeg format to place on a web page.


Last updated May 18, 1999

Comments and/or questions to Tim McCollum

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