Making anaglyph images, Methods and software Options

[stewjack]

I have found more than one good program to make anaglyphs from the same size images of the L & R HAZ and NAV Camera's, but for long baseline anaglyphs you need to do something called "registering" one of the images with the other. Five years ago I had such a program, but not any longer.

Questions
OS Windows 7

1. Does anyone know of such a program that is simple and effective. It doesn't have to be free - but not more than $100!

2. (GIMP) I can create anaglyphs using a Gimp plug-in, if I import the two images as layers. What I haven't been able to figure out is how to make the top layer transparent. Then assume I could slide the top layer around until it is registered.

Can anyone tell me how to adjust the transparency of the top layer?

Gimp is such a pain I would probably pay for a program if I did much of this. I spent about 20 hours messing about with Gimp without getting anywhere. It was only when I accidentally imported color images that the plug-in worked! So now I "increase" the color depth in my images (using Irfan), and save them out as grey-scale images with something called a "color space." It works! What can I say, the plug-in was last updated in 2008! I would love something more automated, but I won't be using it that much.

[jmknapp]

It's pretty easy in photoshop:

open the left and right images
drag one of the images on top of the other to create two layers, don't worry about registration yet
close the file you dragged--not needed any more
change mode from grayscale to rgb
adjust levels for the right image: set Red to 0
adjust levels for the left image: set G and B to 0
for the layer on top, set blending mode to screen
now you can see corresponding elements in each picture and can try to align it in different ways with the move tool
adjust overall levels for each layer for best effect

[ElkGroveDan]

It's pretty easy in photoshop:
..............
adjust overall levels for each layer for best effect

Et voila! Here's one I made from two photos of Yosemite National Park through an airplane window last week (@35,000 feet, roughly over Fresno, California with a 250mm lens looking East). Most of the time spent on it was cleaning up the low contrast, low saturation, color-shifted images that result when you try to take a photo through the three or four layers of plexiglass and glass of a modern aircraft window. But once I had the two cleaned up photos it was quite easy to turn it into a red-blue 3D image using Photoshop CS5 and steps similar to the process jmknapp described above.

Attached thumbnail(s)