Conversion 2D to 3D

Conversion process of 2D to 3D

In order to understand the conversion process from the 2D images to 3D we will first explain what the GRAY-SCALE is. After that we will explain what ANAGLYPH IMAGING means and then Bernardo Galmarini has two articles that describe how he managed to extract the 3D information in the conversion process from 2D to 3D from the images of the head and the front and the back of the body.

Finally we will give a summary of the different aspects of the conversion process and the 3D materials that were produced, like Anaglyph Photographs, the Holograms and Lenticulars and this will be followed by a series of 3D movies that show the head and the front and the back of the body in 3D and moving from left to right and vice versa.

The Gray-Scale

A densitometer measures the differences in density in a photograph. In a black and white photograph, black areas are dense with information and white areas are void of information, The in-between areas are many shades of gray, from almost white to almost black. You can assign a different number or value to each shade of gray, for example on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 represents black and 10 represents white. All numbers between 1 and 10 represent then the various shades of grays. This is a gray-scale or gray map, where different numbers represent different densities in the image. Now you can analyze a photograph, with for example a densitometer, that measures these before-mentioned differences in density, and give each density a different number. When in 1976 John Jackson and Eric Jumper from the Air Force Academy performed this test on a photograph of the Shroud and then used the VP-8 Analyzer to translate this information in vertical height, they found to their big surprise, that this resulted in a perfect 3D model, with an undistorted anatomy of the face and the body. It could even be turned sideways, so that the face could be seen in profile. In the Shroud photographs you will notice, that the parts of the body that were close to the cloth show darker (denser) than the parts of the body that were further away from the linen cloth, with very subtle gradations of gray in-between (in the positive image). This is a very unique inverted distance to image relationship. There is no existing photograph of a face or a human body that contains this information and when converted in the VP-8 Analyzer will always give distortions, like the nose pressed in the face and the arms pressed into the body, with a flattening of the whole relief. The importance for the Shroud image is, that we used this gray-scale, present in the ENRIE photographs from which we know that every pixel contains the cloth-to-body information, to translate this mathematically into vertical height on the Z-axis. This is called the conversion process from 2D to 3D.

If you look at the photograph of the positive and the negative image of the Shroud face you will detect the different densities present in the image. The positive image is like you will see it on the real Shroud and the negative is the reversed version (reversal of dark/light and left/right) as shown by a photographic negative, where we see the image like in real life.

Anaglyph Imaging

Bernardo Galmarini, the 3D expert that produced the conversion from 2D to 3D of the head and of the front and the back of the body, did write the next two articles. Most of the photographs that he used to illustrate these articles are in ANAGLYPH. We will give a short explanation of the ANAGLYPH imaging. IN ORDER TO APPRECIATE THE PHOTOGRAPHS IN THESE ARTICLES, YOU WILL HAVE TO USE A 3D PAIR OF EYEGLASSES, WITH THE RED LENS OVER THE LEFT EYE AND THE CYAN LENS OVER THE RIGHT EYE.

ANAGLYPH IMAGE :

Anaglyph images are used to provide a stereoscopic 3D effect, when viewed with 2 color glasses (each lens a chromatically opposite color, usually red and cyan). Images are made up of two color layers, superimposed, but offset with respect to each other to produce a depth effect. Usually the main subject is in the center, while the foreground and background are shifted laterally in opposite directions. The picture contains two differently filtered colored images, one for each eye. When viewed through the “color coded” “anaglyph glasses”, they reveal an integrated stereoscopic image. The visual cortex of the brain fuses this into perception of a three dimensional scene or composition. Anaglyph images are much easier to view than either parallel (diverging) or crossed-view pairs stereograms (these are used in the article:2D to 3D conversion of the HEAD). However, these side-by-side types offer bright and accurate color rendering, not easily achieved with anaglyphs. Recently, cross-view prismatic glasses with adjustable masking have appeared, that offer a wider image on the new HD video and computer monitors. Various steps can also be used to maximize the quality of the result. These may include size matching of the frames to within a few pixels, rotation (if needed), gamma leveling, and digital sharpening of the softer red image.

HOW ANAGLYPH WORKS :

Viewing anaglyphs through appropriately colored glasses results in each eye seeing a slightly different picture. In a red-blue anaglyph, for instance, the eye covered by the red filter sees the red parts of the image as “white”, and the blue parts as “black” (with the brain providing some adaptation for color); the eye covered by the blue filter perceives the opposite effect. True white or true black areas are perceived the same by each eye. The brain blends together the image it receives from each eye, and interprets the differences as being the result of different distances. This creates a normal stereograph image without requiring the viewer to cross his or her eyes.

VIEWING ANAGLYPH IMAGES:

A pair of eyeglasses with two filters of different colors is worn by the viewer. In Galmarini’s photographs, the red lens over the left eye allows only the red part of the anaglyph image through to that eye, while the cyan (blue/green) lens over the right eye allows only the blue and green parts of the image through to that eye. Portions of the image that are red will appear dark through the cyan filter, while portions of colors composed only of green and blue will appear dark through the red filter. Each eye therefore sees only the perspective it is supposed to see.

 

Summary of the Conversion

The first conversion from 2D to 3D was done in 2005 by Bernardo Galmarini with photographs of Barrie Schwortz, which Barrie took during the STURP investigations in 1978 (© 1978-2010 Barrie M. Schwortz Collection, STERA Inc.) and resulted in the first holograms of the face (of 30 x 40 cm) and the front and the back of the body, (30 x 60 cm) in september of 2005. These holograms were used in the Grizzly Adams documentaries: “The Fabric of Time” and “The Case of Christ’s Resurrection”, where in an interview I told that not a pixel had been changed, which was true of course. The first series of conversions were based ONLY on the visible gray scale of the image, and showed many imperfections in the image, or image-less areas, specifically on the sides of the face and the front of the head, regions around the underarms and the hands and in the back image the sides of the upper legs and parts of the lower legs. These showed up in the converted material as “holes” and in the holograms as black areas without 3D information.

In November of 2005 I visited Barrie Schwortz in Los Angeles and showed him the hologram. His professional comment was that the 3D did not show up better than in the VP-8 Image Analyzer and that we had to improve a lot the 3D. But he also showed us a way of finding “hidden” information in the so-called image-less areas by employing the lasso tool of the Adobe Photoshop program and enhancing the image. That resulted in the discovery that in the Enrie photographs that we used later to produce the new conversions of 2D to 3D in 2006 and 2007, we could find indeed a lot more of information, for example on the anatomical left side of the face, the front of the head and other areas on the body itself, the legs and around the lower part of the arms and hands, and that resulted in the fact that we now had about 85 % of the image that contained from very good- till low intensity image information. The image-less areas were now reduced to about 15 % of the total body image. In 2007 when we started to cooperate with Prof. Avinoam Danin of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, we found also a solution why there was no information in certain areas, specifically on the front of the head, the right anatomical side of the face and around the hands and lower parts of the arms. He found flower and plant images in these areas and the presence of these flowers and plants seemingly blocked the formation of the image of the body in these areas. Identical basically to the blood images, because under the blood there is no body image either. It is good to remember, that there are 3 image-formation processes involved:

1) The blood that is visible on the Shroud of Turin was caused by direct contact between the blood and the surface of the linen cloth.

2) The flower- and plant images on the Shroud. According to Avinoam Danin, these images show characteristics in the image that you also see in images formed by corona discharge.

3) The image of the body itself. Until now, science has not come up with a satisfactory explanation how the body-image was formed. Until now it is unexplainable.

In 2006 and 2007 Bernardo Galmarini produced new and much more sophisticated conversions of 2D to 3D of the face and the front and the back of the body, which resulted in a new series of holograms, anaglyph photographs and lenticular 3D images. He also produced movies where the image of the face and the body are moving from the left to the right side of the screen and they are very impressive indeed. The 3D which was achieved now, was very impressive and the images now also showed much more detail. Quite some people had seen the holograms and we found that they got very confused looking at these images, which was caused by the absence of the upper arms and these areas showed up as big holes in the holograms. As is known, the Shroud was severely damaged and the images of the upper arms were burnt during the fire in the Chapel in Chambery, France on December 4 of the year 1532 and in 1534 patched in places, with pieces of 16th century altar cloth to cover where it was scorched and holed. These patches are also very disturbing in the holograms. Since 2007 we were also helping Father Hector Guerra of the Legionairs of Christ, who had already opened up two exhibitions of the Shroud of Turin in Rome and Jerusalem and he wanted to use the life size holograms in these exhibitions. We decided then to make an ARTFICIAL reconstruction of the missing upper arms but ONLY for these exhibitions, so people would not get confused looking at the big holes where the upper arms were supposed to be and the correlation with the areas where the patches on the side of the upper arms were visible.

So basically there are three versions of all the 3D materials:

1) The scientific version, which is the one that is solely based on the gray scale information in the digitized photographic materials that we used. They clearly show the image-less areas as “holes” and these are the ones that we use, and have used for scientific research. They are what we call the “SCIENTIFIC-3D version”.

2) On the other hand we have the version that we talked about with the ARTIFICIAL reconstruction of the upper arms that are being used ONLY for exhibitions. We call this the “ARTISTIC- version”.

3) When we encountered the image less areas, Bernardo Galmarini decided to “restore” these areas. He filled in the areas with a very thin layer that was taken from the direct surroundings around these areas, but did it in such a way that an expert would always be able to see where and how this had been done. This resulted in the most perfect images of the Man on the Shroud and comes the nearest to an anatomical correct representation of the body. We call this the “SCIENTIFIC-artistic” version, as the 3D is based on 85 % gray-scale information and 15% on “softened” areas where we found the image-less areas.

This answers already many of the questions that have been asked to me during the Q&A after presentations and also mails with questions that people have sent to me.

In November of 2006 MIKE MINOR, in cooperation with TOM D’MUHALA and ISABEL PICZEK of AMSTAR organized an audience with the Shroud Custodian, Cardenal SEVERINO POLETTO. Suzy Philips and Don Giuseppe Ghiberti in Turin set the date and we showed there, in the presence of a group of about 15 Italian Shroud scientists the results of our work, holograms of 100 x 50 cm of the front and the back of the body and different holograms of the face. Cardenal Severino Poletto decided then that a set of the life-size holograms would be placed in the Museo della Sindone in Turin and many people have seen these holograms during the exhibition of the real Shroud in April/May of this year,2010.

The 4 photos shown here are some of the converted materials which we used to create some of the holograms.

Photo 1) is a photograph of Barrie Schwortz of the face (© 1978-2010 Barrie M. Schwortz Collection, STERA Inc.). This was the first conversion and shows very clearly the image-less areas on the right and the left side of the face, following downwards the band in the linen.

Photo 2) and Photo 4) are based on photographic material of Giuseppe Enrie, and show the improved versions where we can see that on the left anatomical side of the face there is much more gray-scale information and also “softer” details in the face.

Photo 3) shows the gray-scale of the image with the different densities.

Photograph 1 till Photograph 4

To show the difference between the series of 2005 and 2007 we will show some photographs of different face holograms and holograms of the front and the back of the body of 2005, compared with anaglyph photographs of part of the improved work of 2007. It is not possible to make photographs of the holograms and show the 3D, because a camera lens cannot see stereoscopically.

Figure 5) 2005–Face with obvious image-less areas on the sides of the face. Figure 6) 2006– Face with less image-less areas, specially on the anatomical left side. Figure 7) 2007– Face with less image-less areas and now also more detail.(use 3D-glasses).

Figure 5

Figure 6

Figure 7

 

Figure 8.) 2005—Hologram of the front of the body, with obvious image-less areas around the face, parts of the lower legs, around the lower arms and hands etc. showing up as black image-less areas. Figure 9) 2007—Anaglyph photograph of the front of the body with more information in the previously image-less areas and also in the whole image of the body. (use 3D glasses).

Figure 8

Figure 9

Figure 10) 2005—Hologram of the back of the body, showing again the image-less areas in black in the body image, see lower parts of the legs etc. Figure 11) 2007—Anaglyph photograph of the back of the body with more information in the previous image-less areas and also more detail in the whole image of the body.(use 3D glasses).

Figure 10

Figure 11