Depth Maker 3D Conversion of Ollie

Hello Friends,

Masuji Suto Strikes Again! We in the 3D community know of and cherish the efforts of Masuji Suto of Japan for his many outstanding contributions to stereo photography. Several years ago he created StereoPhoto Maker, a game-changing free program used in producing and enhancing 3-D images from stereo pairs (a left eye and right eye shot). Ever since then he created numerous updates and improvements to it to keep up with advances in stereo photography.

His app 3D Steroid Pro provided more or less the same tools as StereoPhoto Maker for use on cellphones. Two years ago he released StereoMovie Maker which functions both as a versatile stereo movie editor and stereo movie player.

And a few weeks ago he released Depth Maker. In his words, "The 'DepthMaker' Android application converts 2D photos to 3D and displays them in various 3D formats. It can also save 3D converted side-by-side (SBS) images and send (Share) them to 3DSteroid Pro and other applications, allowing advanced 3D photo editing with 3DSteroid Pro. The application uses an AI engine to generate depth from a 2D photo and automatically saves it as an RGBD image. ..."

In the stereo photography world there is quite a bit of controversy as to whether "stereo conversions" (taking a 2D photo and using depth cues to turn it into a 3D photo) are a valid form of stereo photography. Recently in response to his new app I read more than a few opinions on this topic. Regardless, I've played around with Depth Maker and have been very happy with how easy it is to use and even more so the results. I'm also pleased to report that I can take a 2D shot, convert it to 3D with Depth Maker, and further convert it into a phantogram.

This is a shot of Ollie, a great dog and past image-of-the-week model. Sadly Ollie has been gone for a few years, but our memories of him will live on. The image you see was taken on our front porch. Pepper's hind legs are also in the shot on the right. I converted the 2D shot with Depth Maker and then turned it into a phantograms in Photoshop by approximating a rectangle on the porch (visually a trapezoid on the photo) and matching up corner pixels. The 2D to 3D conversion isn't perfect, you can see slight oddities at the top of Ollie's head, but all in all I think it's damn good.

Thanks again Masuji for all your wonderful contributions to stereo photography!

I'll skip my usual ranting today, although there's more than enough to go into. I'm especially thankful of Danielle Sassoon and other federal prosecutors for their courage in standing up for the rule of law this past week.

Regards,

Barry Rothstein

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