Fabricating 3-D Glasses

Three-D glasses are somewhat difficult to find, but a reasonable substitute can be synthesized using a standard cellophane that is readily available at almost all arts and crafts stores. The following instructions are for the cellophane distributed by Bemiss-Jason. Their cellophane is manufactured in England, so it should be available almost everywhere in North America and Europe.

Place one thickness of red cellophane (Part No. 7310-0) over your left eye or eyeglass. Place two thicknesses of blue cellophane (Part No. 7315-0) over your right eye. The two thicknesses are necessary because the blue is not as optically dense as the red, nor is it as an appropriate an on-color color filter as is the red. The differences in transparencies between the two colors will leave the stereo image somewhat red in color, but that's necessary to get good red-blue channel separation between the two superimposed images -- and thus good stereoscopic effect.

If you stare at the image on the screen for a bit of time, your pupils will differentially adjust to the light differences they are receiving and the image will become gray (or at least, grayish).

These images have been reprocessed from the JPL images and have been resized, sharpened and brightened so as to maximize the 3-D effect when seen on an SVGA (600 x 800 pixel) PC high-color (15-bits or better) display.

You will want to see as much of the image at one time as you possibly can. If you are using a Netscape browser, go to the Options menu and deselect the "Show Directory Buttons" and "Show Location" options. Doing this should provide you with enough screen area to completely see all of the image.

To get the best possible 3-D effect, sit at least an arm's length away from the screen. Be sure that the top of the image is on the screen because this is the reference point for the 3-D effect. If it is not present, the stereo effect will be diminished.