The ability to create 3D cards similar to Holmes cards is good, but unfortunately there is another type of stereoscope which poses severe problems when viewing "standard" Holmes cards. The Owl stereoscope is a modern viewer which is affordable compared to the Holmes kits. The standard Holmes stereoscopes have prismatic lenses which bring the 2 views closer together, but the Owl viewer does not have this feature. The earliest cards had a 2.5 inch (63mm) spacing, but the later ones had 3 inch (76mm) spacing. The wider spacing causes many people to see split images in the Owl viewer. The older Brewster viewer also had plain lenses. Owl viewers are sold on Amazon and 3D stores. They are also included with the books by Brian May. The plain lenses also have the added benefit of lower chromatic aberration.
An added option for the Owl viewer with 2.5 inch spacing of the right and left views would be valuable. Since you already have some options for changing some of the sizes on the cards, making all dimensions variable would allow fixing a lot of problems. While I have no problems using the Owl viewers neither my wife or other close friends can use it for viewing "standard" 3 inch Holmes cards.
Another enhancement that would be of great benefit is the ability to have a line around the edge of the printed card. Since they have to be cut apart to fit into various viewers, a line would be very helpful in guiding the cuts. While it is possible to have a background color, that wastes expensive ink in a high resolution ink jet printer. Commercial duplication is cheaper, but they have a dot spacing that is too wide for creating good Holmes cards.
My object is to give family 3D pictures to relative along with inexpensive Owl viewers. This is probably the least expensive way to give them the beautiful 3D images of childhood memories and parents who have passed away. |
I had looked at the Custom Card setting before, and it didn't seem right, so looking at it again, it can be adjusted to fit Owl viewers which have a max of 3 in divergence vs the Holmes viewers which have a maximum divergence of 3.5. The one remaining problem is that the title is printed at the bottom, but with the extra room on the side, it is much preferable to print it there the same as a standard Holmes card.
Since it is possible to insert text at the bottom of the image having the card with text at the bottom is redundant. Actually there does not seem to be a fixed standard for cards. Somtimes they have printing on the top, side, or bottom and sometimes all 3, or no printing at all.
Since I assume you use the same code for printing cards, the settings option could just be available on all the other options which would be an easy to implement enhancement. You could also add an option for an Owl viewer with about 2.625 inch spacing (16 mm margins). In either case having the option to set margins would allow for 3D views with very deep backgrounds. Automatic spacing for deep backgrounds would be a fantastic enhancement, but would require linking the card creation to the alignment subroutine and passing back the maximum deviation.
Beyond this, being able to type multiple lines into the title would make the card creation much easier. Having autowrap would be also convenient, but not necessary. Apparently it is possible to make a preview exactly match the output, as I have other editors that do this, and the Windows print preview also does this. |
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