3-D Comes to Photo Printers

 

A 3D print from KODACK s new photo printer.

Kodak, the company that brought photography to the masses, as well as the ability for amateurs to develop and print pictures at home, is now bringing 3-D to the standard pictures you print from your digital camera.
At last week’s CONSUMER ELECTRONIC the company showed off the new, as-yet-unnamed capability, which will be included as part of the feature set of its new $100 ESP C310 model, to be introduced this spring.
The all-in-one printer will come with two paper-frame 3-D glasses in Kodak’s signature bright yellow design, along with special 3D-processing software and instructions.
To create a 3-D image, users will be instructed to shoot the same scene twice, with the second offset about 2 to 3 inches from the first. A Kodak spokesman suggested a good way to do that would be to shoot the first looking through one eye, and the second through the other.
The processing software (Windows only; Macs need not apply) will then meld the two images into one frame that can be printed. The resulting image will look just like any 3-D picture, with two images slightly apart from each other.
The 3-D effect is created uses the anaglyph process: the 3-D glasses contain a red and cyan filter, just like the 3-D comics of old.
And like those old comic books, the effect created using Kodak’s anaglyph glasses is poor, and virtually unviewable after a few seconds. The image shimmers unpleasantly, and what one sees is not so much depth of rounded objects, but rather a series of flat planes that appear to be at different distances. The effect is nothing like what can be seen from a 3-D television.
Based on the sample images available at Kodak’s exhibit, I doubt that the 3-D printing feature will do little, if anything, to boost the company’s printer sales.