Lenticular printing has been around for a long while, showing up most frequently in cereal packets and novelty items. It has it’s serious applications in photography, and until recently all processing was done on aMinilab system similar to those used in High Street chemists. Whilst that process works very well, there is now only one lab in the world we know of still using one. All the others have given up due to lack of the special materials needed. Our process at 3D Creations is a computer based system which is not as susceptible to the vagaries of supply (hopefully). The film is processed conventionally to produce the strip of negatives, and then scanned into the computer system. Each photograph is then enhanced with up to eight individual processes to achieve the best image quality possible. The images are then aligned and output to a special interlacing utility which then compresses and slices the images into sequential strips to closely match the lens sheet (see diagram). The result is printed and finally the lens is glued on top of the print in exact register. Our process is not an automated production line, every negative and print are individually crafted for optimum results.
The images are compressed in width and sliced to fit the lens array. The lens magnifies a single compressed strip so that it appears to fill the width of the lens. The appearance is that the image is continuous across the picture. The other eye being offset sees an adjacent strip and thus sees the next picture. If you move to one side you will see a different pair of frames and they will appear to rotate slightly, adding to the 3D effect.
