I’m back again! To yet again discuss something seemingly unrelated, that I can somehow manage to circle back into my studies. 🤷🏻♀️
Fancy picture books
So…Magic Eye. Those books from the 90s with the weird patterns that “supposedly” had a hidden image in them. If you don’t remember (or are too young) here is a Goodreads link to find out more.
My grandparents always had them at their house, and my grandpa really loved them. He tried so hard to explain how to see the images, but I just couldn’t. Until one day…for some reason, I crossed my eyes and suddenly there was something else on the page! It blew my mind, but there it was.
The thing is…I could get the image to appear, but most of the time I had no idea what it was. I could see the outlines but it was too hard to figure out what it was. My dad didn’t understand because it was RIGHT THERE.
Fast forward A LOT of years (literally a few weeks ago) I stumbled across some Facebook groups/pages that share all sorts of these images and I found out there are TWO different ways to see these images! And for the majority of images out there, I was using the wrong method. When you look at the image, it should pop out towards you like a 3D picture, but my images were always inverted and sunken in. Making it nearly impossible to see any real details.
So…long story short, crossing your eyes is one way to see the images, looking through the image and focusing behind it is the other method. It’s weird and science-y and confusing, but I found a neat little generator and made my own images.
For this first one you need to use parallel vision (looking through) to see the image pop out. This is how most stereograms seem to be made. I can cross my eyes and see something there, but it’s just kind of a blob.
The second one…looks identical, right? Well, you can see it popping out if you use the cross-eyed approach.
Same exact images. Different methods to see them. (And different results based on that method)
Pretty cool!
So…this brings me back to my initial problem. I was using the wrong method to approach the images. And the parallel method is much harder to accomplish (for me anyway).
I was determined to figure out this new method. It wasn’t easy, but I read what others were saying, tried some of their tricks and just kept practicing. After just a few days of practicing, I was actually able to figure it out and see the images pretty consistently.
So…yeahh
I guess it was a good reminder that learning new things (Magic Eye or website development) really just requires some solid practice. It helps to know what methods are available, and which one(s) make the most sense for what you are trying to do.
Also…just because you got something to work, it doesn’t mean it’s the BEST way. If it feels a little off…keep researching and see if you can find a different approach.
I'm usually so bad at these! But I could see them!!!!!