Instructions for using StereoPhoto Maker 4.34 to format images for the Hasbro My3D viewer

The Hasbro My3D stereoscopic viewer is a binocular viewer

designed for viewing side-by-side 3-D images on iPhone and iPod Touch viewing screens. Originally introduced at US$35, as of this writing the price has dropped to US$25. However, it seems to have good quality lenses of 1” (25mm) diameter with about a 4” (101mm) focal length.

The viewer comes with four interchangeable cradles for holding various models of iPods and iPhones, included the latest series (4G), which has a high resolution retina display that works quite well. For 3-D photographers the trick is formatting parallel side-by-side images to be uploaded to an iPod or iPhone, so that they will view properly in the My3D viewer.

The latest 4.34 version of StereoPhoto Maker solves this problem, and has format options for the My3D viewer, both for individual image formatting, and for batch conversion of stereo pairs to this format.

The first step is to align your left and right 3-D images. If you have already been using StereoPhoto Maker (SPM), do exactly as before, and save the aligned images in an aligned images folder. If you have not used SPM before, read the “SPM Beginner’s Guide” which has two download links on the SPM download web page. One version is for people using twin digital cameras, or scanning image pairs from previously shot 3-D negatives, slides or prints. The other version that says Fuji W1, is for anyone using the Fujifilm W1 or W3 stereo cameras. My suggestion is to save 3-D pictures in a Side-by-Side JPEG format. That way the images are always together, and SPM can split them apart for converting to other formats, such as Anaglyphs, Stereo Print Cards, or, in this case, for the Hasbro My3D format. [see the Note for SSCC Members on the page after next]

If you want your images to fill the maximum image area of the My3D viewer, you will have to manually crop the images using the following steps. See the screenshots for each step, which are very helpful.

STEP 1:

Open up your left and right stereo pair in SPM so that they are showing on screen. Then click on the EDIT popdown, click on CROP, followed by CUSTOM CROPPING on the flyout, and then in the CUSTOM CROPPING dialogue box, put Width 452 and Height 640. Check the resize after cropping box, and then press OK.

STEP 2:

Click on the cropping tool (read the Help instructions if you do not know how to use the tool) and drag it from the upper left corner of the image at the point you want to start, and stay clicked and drag it to the lower right corner. It will keep the vertical ratio of the image area of the My3D viewer. Before you click on the center of the image for final cropping, you can click and drag the box right or left to show the area you would like to choose. Then clicking in the image area will do the final cropping. If you make a mistake use the UNDO button on the tool bar. Holding the cursor over the buttons will show captions for each tool.

STEP 3:

Press CTRL + J to show the SAVE IMAGE dialogue box for saving the image in My3D format. Then change name and saving location, if desired, and press the SAVE button. Repeat for the next images.

STEP 4:

If you do not want to crop the image at all for viewing in the My3D viewer, simply open the Stereo image, or the Left and Right images so the pair is on the screen. Then, WITHOUT CROPPING, press CTRL + J, and the dialogue box will open as in Step 3, but you will see the thumbnail of the full image, with the black septum in the center. As with Step 3, you may change the name and saving location as desired. Then repeat with the next Stereo Pair.

Sample image: cropped version

Sample image: un-cropped version with top and bottom black banding

MULTI CONVERSION (batch processing) of aligned stereo pairs to My3D format:

STEP 1: (This assumes you want to save both “normal” side-by-side images, as well as a set of images aligned for the My3D).

Begin by using “SPM Beginner’s Guide” instructions for MULTI CONVERSION to align a group of images into their own folder. (or take a group you have already previously aligned).

Also create an empty “Images for My3D Viewer” folder to use later.

STEP 2: Open MULTI CONVERSION dialogue box again. Browse to the folder that has the group of images that you want to convert for My3D viewer viewing. Check the INPUT FILE TYPE check box (assuming this is the type of file that you are using, including MPO files). For OUTPUT FILE TYPE choose IMAGE FOR My3D VIEWER at bottom of list. Choose other settings as desired. Save to the “Images for My3D VIEWER folder” that you have created. Then CONVERT ALL FILES (unless you want to highlight and convert selected files). You should find that all of the images now are converted to the same ratio as they were previously, but with a black septum down the middle, and letter-boxed top and bottom, if they were full size (for example 4:3 ratio) images that were being converted. If you want to have images that fill the entire image area, you will have to use the manual cropping to My3D ratio described in the individual image formatting section. See the screen shot below (and happy converting for your My3D viewer!):

Final tip:

For individual image formatting, instead of using CTRL + J, one may also use a popdown menu as shown below:

Comments

  1. Donn says:

    Good article, but one important point missing. How do I get the converted my3d image onto the ipod?

  2. Simon Bell says:

    Hi David, I used SPM’s My3D setting to output some images as you’ve suggested in your article but they looked very pixelated. So then I did an SPM save of the same images but as full res side-by-side jpgs and they look much better. It seems that while the retina screen on my iPhone4 is 960×640 the images need to be saved at a higher resolution to look their best. Can you confirm that this is your experience as well? Cheers, Simon

  3. Simon Bell says:

    David, here’s an update. The files need to be twice the screen res for the iPhone4′s retina display to show the images best on the My3D. So I set SPM’s custom cropping to 900×1280 px and set an L/R space of 120 px in border options under the view menu. Looks good! Next I’m going to try increasing the image area to 910 px and reduce the border to 100 px and see how that looks.

  4. Chris Casady says:

    But how do I get the converted my3d image onto the ipod? I’m guessing I add the folder of converted images to iPhoto, then sync the iPod to iPhoto. Which makes sense to me because I have a Mac. How do you PC people do it?

Copyright © 2013 Stereo Club of Southern California