Darlene Davis

Part of the intern program at NPR is this intern-produced multimedia/radio show and blog called Intern Edition. This summer our theme was 3D, as in multi-dimensional stories/innovation etc. THE FUTURE.

As photo editor of the blog, I (foolishly?) volunteered to take portraits of all fifty-something of us, and to fit the theme I thought making stereoscopic GIFs would be a good idea. It took all summer, but they’re finally done!

I also used this “wiggle vision” technique in this fun little promotional video for NPR Music.

I took about 8 photos of each person, moving ever so slightly to one side (like an inch for every frame) , and then used Photoshop to create the GIF. To do this, bring all 8 frames (or however many you’d like, you can even do this with two) into the same Photoshop document as separate layers. Then choose a point of axis, like the eyes, and line the layers up so that point is in the same place no matter which layer is visible.

Open the animation panel under the Window menu. Duplicate the frame until you have two less than double your number of layers. (So for 8 layers you’ll want 14 frames). For the first frame make sure the photo taken from the far left (or right) is visible, then for each frame after change the layer visibility so as you go from one frame to the next, you are seeing the next photo in the shift from left to right, then back to the left bringing it back to the starting position to complete the loop.

In the lower left corner of the animation panel change ‘once’ to ‘forever’ and set the time interval you’d like fore each frame. You can press play to test the animation, and when it looks good, go to File > Save for Web & Devices. Select GIF from the dropdown, and save.

To see what other cool things people have been doing with so-called “wiggle-vision” check out my blog post on NPR’s The Picture Show.

MORE POSTS

My summer of 2008 in one photograph

Wiggle-vision for NPR Music

Stop-Motion Radio Madness!!

Tags Animated GIF intern edition npr stereoscopy