Patent ID: 8884948

Claim:
A method for generating stereoscopic volume for a two dimensional digital image comprising: obtaining a first two dimensional image comprising a first image portion and a second image portion; generating a second two dimensional image comprising a duplicate of the first image portion and a duplicate of the second image portion; analyzing by a processing element a plurality of original pixels of the two dimensional digital image; creating a digital gray scale template, wherein a first set of pixels of the gray scale template correspond to the first image portion, a second set of pixels of the gray scale template correspond to the second image portion, and wherein whiter portions of the digital gray scale template correspond to pixels further in a foreground than darker portions of the digital gray scale template; determining automatically by the processor a volume effect for the first image portion based on one or more characteristics of the first image portion; and horizontally offsetting the first image portion relative to the duplicate of the first image portion a first amount and the second image portion relative to the duplicate of the second image a second amount, different from the first amount; wherein the first image and the second image are displayed substantially contemporaneously for stereoscopic viewing of the image; and the first amount is a combination of a depth pixel offset for a layer of the two dimensional image and a volume pixel offset corresponding to the volume effect for the first image portion.