page_title: Anaglyph 3D
section_title: Complementary color
hierarchical_section_title: Anaglyph 3D / Types / Complementary color
caption_attribution_description: English: Paper glasses for viewing Anaglyphs.
context_page_description: Anaglyph 3D is the stereoscopic 3D effect achieved by means of encoding each eye's image using filters of different colors, typically red and cyan. Anaglyph 3D images contain two differently filtered colored images, one for each eye. When viewed through the "color-coded" "anaglyph glasses", each of the two images reaches the eye it's intended for, revealing an integrated stereoscopic image. The visual cortex of the brain fuses this into the perception of a three-dimensional scene or composition.
  Anaglyph images have seen a recent resurgence due to the presentation of images and video on the Web, Blu-ray Discs, CDs, and even in print. Low cost paper frames or plastic-framed glasses hold accurate color filters that typically, after 2002, make use of all 3 primary colors. The current norm is red and cyan, with red being used for the left channel. The cheaper filter material used in the monochromatic past dictated red and blue for convenience and cost. There is a material improvement of full color images, with the cyan filter, especially for accurate skin tones.
  Video games, theatrical films, and DVDs can be shown in the anaglyph 3D process.
context_section_description: Complementary color anaglyphs employ one of a pair of complementary color filters for each eye. The most common color filters used are red and cyan. Employing tristimulus theory, the eye is sensitive to three primary colors, red, green, and blue. The red filter admits only red, while the cyan filter blocks red, passing blue and green (the combination of blue and green is perceived as cyan). If a paper viewer containing red and cyan filters is folded so that light passes through both, the image will appear black. Another recently introduced form employs blue and yellow filters. (Yellow is the color perceived when both red and green light passes through the filter.)
  Anaglyph images have seen a recent resurgence because of the presentation of images on the Internet. Where traditionally, this has been a largely black & white format, recent digital camera and processing advances have brought very acceptable color images to the internet and DVD field. With the online availability of low cost paper glasses with improved red-cyan filters, and plastic framed glasses of increasing quality, the field of 3D imaging is growing quickly. Scientific images where depth perception is useful include, for instance, the presentation of complex multi-dimensional data sets and stereographic images of the surface of Mars. With the recent release of 3D DVDs, they are more commonly being used for entertainment. Anaglyph images are much easier to view than either parallel sighting or crossed eye stereograms, although these types do offer more bright and accurate color rendering, most particularly in the red component, which is commonly muted or desaturated with even the best color anaglyphs. A compensating technique, commonly known as Anachrome, uses a slightly more transparent cyan filter in the patented glasses associated with the technique. Processing reconfigures the typical anaglyph image to have less parallax to obtain a more useful image when viewed without filters.
caption: Paper anaglyph filters produce an acceptable image at low cost and are suitable for inclusion in magazines.
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