Rusty, those pics are excellent! If they do not give 3D effect than I .. will have to read through all 28 pages of this discussion to learn what does . Btw do you know what lens was used?
Edgars ... Yes, I think these are a couple of shots that are 'poster children' for 3D viewing. There are of course MANY others out there, but I'm partial to ribs (yum) ... and Braniac's motorcycle shot and Samuli's 'machine shop' pic.
There are WAY TOO MANY other people who also should be mentioned for having outstanding work in this area ... but these are a few that stick out for me (back to that viewer emotive interface thing). It would be great if some 'veterans of 3D' would re-post their 'single' Best of Best / Favorite 3D shot ... to somewhat revive things.
Glad you like the pics.
IIRC ... that was the Leica 100 APO that PSquared63 used.
Well, haven't posted this one here...and I can't say it's that interesting a subject. But I see 3D here, maybe not as much as other posts I've seen here. But if I had to pick one of mine, this would be it. I'm looking forward to spring, don't shoot all that much late fall/winter.
On the gear side of things, I would've like to seen it shot at 5.6, as I think that might be a 'sweeter' spot for your lens' micro-contrast to really make things 'pop' a bit more.
Tim, I think your barn has potential for 3D but you have used method on resizing and sharpening which makes edges more visible but looses micro contrast. Due to this at first glance you image always looks like it's focused to background not to the subject itself. Sharpening more won't solve it since you will just get more attention to the background tree. This is typical to many sharpening methods, which really do not work for web.
For this kind of photo I would use either USM or step downsizing&sharpening.
USM with 0.2px radius and high amount somewhere between 200% and 400% (if you do this then you better be in gamma 1.0 color space or your image lightness changes due to sharpening), but I doubt even this would work since the micro contrast detail in the bard is having so small contrast (very similar red tones), and if first resized and then sharpened there no longer exists anything to sharpen.
Step downsizing and sharpening is complicated action, which I mostly used (I have automated it by creating droplets from actions, I really hate any extra second spent on Photoshop, by using droplet I don't have to use Photoshop at all). In princible there is no exact recipe for it, but you could try that you resize the image width to 3800px, then run Filters -> Sharpen -> Sharpen, then resize to 2100px, then run Filters -> Sharpen -> Sharpen, then resize to 975px, and then do USM with low amount (100-150%) and small pixel size (0.2px). Alternatively this image might work with one step (2500px -> 975px - in 2500px do Sharpen twice). Make sure you are doing this with 16-bit image on wide colorspace AND preferably on one which has gamma 1.0, then as a last step convert profile to sRGB for web. If you prefer other websize then scale earlier scaling size accordingly - specially avoid scaling in this step process in where you scale from 4000px to 2000px or from 4500px to 3000px since this kind of mathematically "nice" scalings will cause different aliaising on downscaling, which will work against you on the end result.
Of course best would be to shoot this photo again in light, which would bring out more the texture of your main subject.
The full size photo was sharpened using USM 300/.3/0 @ gamma 1, but was downsized by Zenfolio....I didn't do the downsizing directly. I'll have to play around with resizing myself with the technique you describe to see if it makes tangible difference. Post processing isn't one of my strong points.
Lighting wasn't probably the best, that might have been a good part of the problem....plus I was stopped down a little too far. Was shooting my kids prior to that and I was trying to give myself a little more DOF headroom to make up for my rustiness with manual focus. I had the lens about 2 weeks when I took this shot. I've gotten a lot more comfortable since then.
Sharpening techniques is obviously often a "home brew" of what people have come up with when just trying. I'm using 150% 1.2 pix USM on the full image, then bicubic downscaling to 800 pix and 35% 0.6 pix USM. That's it, and with the 35 Distagon it's enough to bring out a lot of detail without looking oversharpened.
Edit: The RAW is first sharpened with 25/1.0 in ACR. Close to nothing, since I really don't like how ACR handles sharpness.
It's the simple Nikkor 50/1.8 AI-S "Mk I". Not the same as later AI-S or AF 50/1.8. It has an oversized front element and a slightly different optical formula.
I was about to sell this lens because I also have the 50/1.2, but I think I'll keep it.
I finally got a little sunshine (warmth & light) ... woo hoo !!
This is with a Mamiya M645 150 2.8 A at f11 (RAW + pp)
NOTE: The original shot was vertical orientation, so about 30-35% has been cropped out for composition.
Sorry for the 'huge' file ... looking for feedback regarding file size / viewing distance impact on the perception / effect.
Canon lenses have always felt like they had a film over them, and I've always had to work on them in photoshop to get my images to the point where I was happy. I don't mean alter the lighting, I mean just overall tweaking of contrast, saturation, sharpness, curves etc...
Sometimes I work on the files, and they end up looking 3D, sometimes they don't. I suspect that 3D images come from a lot more then just tweaking lens properties in photoshop. It has a lot to do with textures and composition. But if a lens sucks, you have to work the file till it produces that effect. And honestly sometimes working a file degrades image quality to the point where you do more harm to it's potential 3D effect.
So, if 3D can be achieved with photoshop, then a lens can have 3D qualities.
If you can get a Zeiss 3D lens (a lens that doesn't have that canon film/haze), then it would therefore produce a 3D effect straight out of camera, IF the conditions were correct for it. Where as if the conditions were correct for it, could you do it with a Canon lens? Yes, but not every time, and not with every lens.
Somewhere on the forum someone posted a shot with a 50 1.8 canon lens, a shot of a horse laying down... Honestly, that was an amazing shot, to me, very lifelike very 3D. So it happens, but it's not to say that having a good 3D lens doesn't make it happen easier or better.
. Btw do you know what lens was used?