Turning a 2D image into 3D by mol smith August 2013                 {PAGE 4}

You're going to hate doing this bit! You must use the Gaussian blur tool to blur your greyscale layer. If you don't do this, the software used to create the 3D will try to be too accurate and it messes up the effect! I  use a blur of about 3.5 to 5 depending on how big the image is. See my one blurred below...

Flatten the layers and save the greyscale image as a {something}-bw.tif
Use go back or undo and turn off the greyscale layer and flatten again. Save the coloured layer as {something}-col.tif

We've finished with photoshop. There are several software packages out there for creating 3D. I use two, both authored in Russia. The software is for creating Lenticular images, you know - those 3d covers you see on posters, dvds, and advertising displays. For the swivelling 3D images I use Stereo Tracer. It's not cheap but I think it's the easist to use and the effects are very good. if you know of cheaper ones, drop me a line.

You open your colour and greyscale image with the software, and generate frames (15 is a good number) after setting parallax, setting zero parallax, and number of frames. Use 5, 6, or 7 for parallax, and 250 for zero parallax. You can experiment with these to determine the best effect. I have done all this to Dennis's bedbug image. See below...