Processing Images from the Nishika N8000 with Photoshop

So you've taken a load of shots for your friends waving their arms around and assuming whacky 3D poses and now you want to turn 2D film into 3D magic.

Well, as luck would have it you can use Photoshop to load the files into a stack and then animate them to give a crude 3D effect.

To do this you first need to scan your images onto your computer. Then carefully retouch each photo to remove and dust or scratch marks. It's also a good idea to use Curves to use the white or black eye dropper to set a white or black point - leave a frame around each scanned image. This will usually be black and so is a good reference point. Similarly find an area of white (if possible) on the image and set this as a white point. Doing this for each image ensures that that each frame will have the same colour profile.

Save each frame and open all four. Choose File>Scripts>Load Files into Stack. Then choose Add Open Files and check the "Attempt to Auto Align..." box. You can, if you wish use the ruler tool to align each frame separately but Photoshop's auto pilot seems to work fine.

Next open Windows>Animation. Then open the top right hand dialogue box and choose Make Frames from Layers. This will bring up a sequence of the four frames, which will play continuously in a loop giving you the short animation sequence with a 3D effect (see below). To make this sequence smoother, click on frame 3 and press the new frame button. This will produce frame 5. Next select frame 2 and click the new frame button. This will give you frame 6. Make sure you select the Forever playback option (bottom left hand corner of the window).

Now Save for Web & Devices as an Animated gif and Bob's your Uncle, you own 3D (ish) file! Some applications (such as Flickr) may not then play the animated gif file, so what you need to do is the following. Upload the files to Flickr. Then you need to upload the files onto Photobucket (which is also free). Having done this, Photobucket will give you html code for that photo. Go back to Flickr and paste the html code in the comments box. Post the comment and voila! the animated image will play underneath. Use Photobucket's html code whenever you need to (for example some blog's won't play the animation.

See here for the complete review of the Nishika N800.