Anaglyphs: How to Make a 3D Photo Using Gimp

When viewed through red and blue glasses an anaglyph images appears to be three-dimensional. Here's how to make a 3D anaglyph using Gimp.

You need two pictures of the same scene taken about 7cm apart. The shots should converge slightly towards the focal point of the image. Try not to use the camera's build in flash.

1. first open the two images as layers in Gimp. (file / open as layers)
2. select the left image (windows / dockable dialogs / layers)
3. apply a red tint to the left image (colors / colorify)
4. select the right image (windows / dockable dialogs / layers)
5. apply a cyan tint to the right image (colors / colorify)
6. select the top layer (windows / dockable dialogs / layers)
7. set the top layer's mode to addition
8. wear the 3D specs and if necessary adjust the layer's position
9. finally, flatter the image (image / flatten image)

There are some great examples of 3D photos in Wikipedia's entry for anaglyph images. Let me know if you give this a try; I'd love to see what you create. :-)

Entrecard Blackjack - a Serious Flaw

Entrecard recently announced a new Blackjack game using the EntreCredits API. Players can gamble their credits, winning or losing on the turn of a card.

Not only is this a strange addition to a blog advertising network, it's also gambling.  Credits can be purchased for cash and gambled freely.  The network doesn't allow gambling ads so why promoting this?  I noticed no age restriction or daily limits.  Advertising networks should concentrate on what they do best - advertising blogs.

Individual bets are limited to 500ec (about $1.50).  Unfortunately the game has a serious flaw making it easy to amass 50000 credits an hour.  It would be irresponsible to publish a full description before the developers have fixed the problem, but it does highlight the importance of testing web apps before general release.

Blogger's New Template Designer

This week Blogger added a new template designer to Blogger in Draft with a choice of 15 base templates, 350 background images, custom colour schemes, 1-3 column layouts and resizeable columns. There's even a section to add your own custom CSS.

The new designs on Retro Programming and Make Nothing Online both use the Simple Template. Retro Programming has a background image from the technology gallery while Make Nothing Online has an image from the abstract gallery. I also added a couple of custom CSS tweak for acronyms, abbreviations and code sections:

pre {margin: 1em;
padding: 8px;
border: 1px dashed #35de5c;
background: white;
}

acronym, abbr {border-bottom: 1px dashed silver;
cursor: help
}

Have you experimented with the new template designer yet? Let me know how you get on :-)