Anaglyph step by step

Step by step guide of making a anaglyph

After finding a tutorial on Youtube on how to make a anaglyph I followed it using one of my own photos to see how hard it would to make one. And to see if it would be feasible to use them for this project. Below is the steps I took to create a anaglyph using the tutorial I posted before.

Step 1:

The first step was deciding what parts of the image I wanted to stand out and look 3D. Figure 1 shows what I wanted to make 3D marked in red.

Figure 1

Step 2:

Once you have decided on what to make 3D you need to make a selection of it. To do this I used the pen tool and created and saved a path of the front tree to start with, this was so I could come back or make alters to the selection if I needed to, also because the pen tool being one of the most accurate tools to make a selection with. Figure 2 shows a path being created around the foreground tree. Figure 3 shows me expanding the selection by a few pixels to ensure I've got all of the tree selected.

Figure 2

Figure 3

Step 3:

Once the selection has been made a copy of the selections content should be made onto a new layer. For sake of clarity, as this method involves creating a lot of layers, the layer should be labeled for reference, I named the layer foreground tree.

After this has been done go back to the previous layer with the selection on and go to Edit > Fill > Content aware. This fills the selection to make it look like the background, removing the tree. Don't worry if it doesn't match as the 3D tree will be put in its place so you won't be able to see the backdrop. See Figure 4.

Figure 4

Step 4:

Two further copies of the tree should then be made. Label the top layer Red and the second layer Cyan. Hide the original selection layer. Figure 5 shows these extra layers.

Double click the red layer to bring up the layer options. Deselect the green and blue channels, this will be the red layer. See figure 6.

Open the layer options like before on the cyan layer, deselect the red channel, this will be the cyan layer. See figure 7.

Figure 6 

Figure 7

Figure 8

Step 5:

To make the image 3D these two layers, the red and cyan, need to be off set. To do this you select the layer with the move tool and using the arrow buttons on your keyboard hit the left and right keys. This moves the layer 1 pixel per press. The red layer should be moved to the right and cyan layer to the left. Remember to move the layers equal distances. See Figure 8. The further apart the layers the greater the distance it will appear from the background.

See Figure 9 shows the anaglyph effect.

Figure 8

Figure 9

• To make the image look more believable make the image up in layers in terms of foreground being off set the greatest distance. Then make another layer just behind it off setting slightly less, and so on until you reach the background which isn't off set at all.
• Off set distances will be different for every image depending on size, subject matter ect. Experiment with distances to find the optimum, beware of the ghosting effect. 

Here are two examples of my experimentation with Anaglyphs. The first, the black and white image, has a much larger offset and is subject to the ghosting effect that can occur, where a double image appears.

The second image has a much more subtle effect as it was difficult to make the image look realistic because of the composition, i had to experiment with making the floor appear 3D as well so as the tree didn't appear to be just floating on nothing.