Spectacled visions (day 144)

I'm a big fan of phantograms.  Terry Wilson sells them at the Stereoscopic Displays and Applications conference.  I always feel like buying way too many.  Phantograms are stereoscopic images that appear to pop out of the page when positioned on a table and viewed at an angle (standing up).  It can make things like bowls and flowers seem like they are really on the table.   There is an art to creating and printing a phantogram.  One of the biggest issues is getting accurate colours so the stereoscopic effect works well and the subject looks good.  It can be hard to get good colour with anaglyphs (most phantograms are anaglyphs).  This time I bought a book on phantograms.  Like most things stereoscopic it's slightly tacky but I like it that way.

The other neat thing I saw today is a product called StereoJet.  It prints stereo images onto polarized sheets which can then be laminated and framed.  The images can be viewed with polarized glasses (similar to those used in 3D theatres).  The left and right images are printed onto orthogonal linearly polarized sheets which are then superimposed. A third sheet adds a quarter wave retarder which create circular polarization.

I also saw a demo of Digimarc technology which embeds visual codes as watermarks into images.  These can be detected by a camera and used to retrieve information about an image.  Unlike other similar technologies, the marks are undetectable so they don't obscure or change the design of the picture.  It's been used extensively to keep track of where images are being used and help protect copyright.  But for me the use of the watermark to reveal related information from the image is more interesting than the copyright applications.  I love the idea of getting out my camera to take a picture of something and being informed that there is more to this picture.  Better yet, it would be great to be able to encode information into pictures I take with my cell phone.  Things like voice, links to other pictures, links, etc.

A song for this post.