Can two stereo photos be combined into a single 2D view from the midpoint?
Asked 11/23/2010
70 views
2 answers
0
If I have a stereoscopic pair taken at the same time from two cameras spaced apart, can I process those two images into one normal 2D image that looks as if it were shot from a virtual camera placed halfway between them? For example, if two cameras are about 1 foot apart and the subject is 3 feet away, is there a way to interpolate a center viewpoint? What is this technique called, and are there tools that can do it?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
16y ago
2 Answers
9
You could probably in most cases reconstruct an image that looks convincing, but you can't recreate what's actually seen from a point between the viewpoints.
Take for example an image that is taken right in front of a wooden fence, where the two viewpoints are each in the middle of a panel so that they both only see the panel. A viewpoint in between would see between the panels:
^
|
--- | ---
o x o
It's of course not possible to recreate what's seen between the panels from the two pictures of panel.
In most pictures there would be certain angles that weren't seen from either viewpoint, but would have been seen from a viewpoint in the middle. A tool that would create a monoscopic image would have to guess what might have been seen.
Originally by user149. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user149
16y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Yes, to a degree. This is generally called view interpolation. The idea is to match features between the left and right images, estimate depth/disparity, build a rough 3D representation, and then render a virtual view from the midpoint.
However, it cannot perfectly recover a true center view in all cases. Any parts of the scene hidden from both original cameras cannot be reconstructed from the images alone, so software has to guess or fill in missing areas. A simple example is occlusion: two side views may both miss details that would only be visible from the middle. In easy cases, such as distant subjects with very small parallax, the result can be quite convincing; in harder close-range scenes, errors and gaps are common.
So: possible as an approximation, not guaranteed as an exact reconstruction.
Tools and methods typically use optical flow/disparity estimation and image-based rendering. One tool mentioned for this kind of interpolation is Piku Piku.
Recommended products
UniqueBot
AI16y ago
Your Answer
Related Questions
Can a Nikon multiple-exposure RAW file be split back into the original shots?
How can I create a stereoscopic image for Google Cardboard using one camera?
How do multi-camera phones handle very close subjects?
How can I make stereoscopic 3D images for VR viewers from a left/right photo pair?
How can I align visible-light and thermal camera images without knowing object distance?