I use my Mac for...
Stereo pictures
QCan you tell us a little about what stereo photography is? Paul Dunning: It’s a technique that involves shooting two photos of one subject, moving a camera to the left or right between shots (you can also use two cameras). You end up with a left image and a right image. To see the 3D effect, you need some kind of lens or filter to ensure the right eye sees only the right image, and the left eye sees only the left image. When you do this, the brain interprets them as a single 3D scene
QHow does your Mac help with that? PD: I have a stereo camera, a Fuji Finepix Real 3D W3. This has two lenses, and takes two 10MP images (a left and a right). These are saved as an MPO file – a container file that can store more than one image. I have to extract the two images from these files. There are applications out there that do this, but they only work on one image at a time, and if you take a lot of images, this can be quite time consuming. So I wrote an AppleScript droplet that batch-converts the MPO file into a single image with the left photograph on the left, and the right photograph on the right.
QAnd then do you move on to Photoshop? PD: Yes. This can then be imported into a regular image editor (like Photoshop) and worked on. To help save me time, I also have a Photoshop template. This gives me what is called a Holmes Card, with the left/right images in the right place. I import the image my Applescript outputs, and it gets placed into the left and right positions; I use a smart object for this. This smart object is also helpful, because edits to the stereo image need to be as consistent as possible. As the smart object is duplicated in the template, these changes affect both instances at the same time.
QIs there anything missing from your set-up? PD: I’d like to improve the camera itself. There are lens adapters for the two regular cameras I have that will let me take stereo images with more control than the Fuji gives me. The other option is to buy a matching camera and lens for one of my cameras and fix the two side by side.
I’d also love a stereo viewer. This would let me sit at my desk and see the stereo effect of an image while I edit it. There are a few available, so I’m weighing up the pros and cons of each. At the moment, I have to use a handheld lens that’s designed for looking at stereo cards. These lenses have a very short focal length, so looking at it on a regular screen is asking for trouble! I found I can use my iPad to share the Mac screen over VNC and view the image that way, which is more comfortable.
QWhy have you chosen to work on a Mac over a PC? PD: Software, basically. There’s a lot of it about that helps me move my photos from the camera to a finished slide I can share. Applescript makes it easy to batch-convert the MPOs to regular bitmaps. At the other end of the process, I like to share my images. With this in mind, I built a viewing system that works on an iPad, as well as on a desktop machine through a website. I used Tumult’s Hype to build the viewing platform. I have another AppleScript droplet that batch-converts my Photoshop files into files the correct size to view on an iPad. Some modern stereo viewers have an aperture in back – so my web viewer takes advantage of this and presets the cards in a size that works well with those.