Stereo Realist mount size prints.

faeowolf wrote:

I am trying to make Stereorealist mount size stereoview cards which I can view in an opaque Radex Stereorealist slide viewer. I know that the mount is 41mm x 101mm dimensionally. Has anyone ever done this? I need to take a stereo pair and somehow print it probably on 4x6 prints at Wal mart, so I am trying to configure the stereo pair in Stereophotomaker. I have been told my images can be no bigger than 28mm x 24mm. I am somewhat of a novice so if anyone has done this and can make a little tutorial that would be very helpful.

Okay. First let me tell you why it would be a bad idea then I'll tell you how I would do it.

A full frame 35mm slide or negative has the equivalent of roughly 20M pixels of information. A Realist slide is 1/2 frame so the information in each Realist slide is about equal to 2x10M pixels, abut the same as in a Fujifile W3 image.

Even if you set your ink jet printer to thousands of dots per inch the reality is that the ink dots bleed and spread so that if you look closely you will see that the image is blurred. This is why you need to add extra sharpening to your image when you print them. Even ink jet prints made on a 4"x6" sheet of are not all that sharp if you look at them closely.

If you print the two 10M pixel images from a W3 as two small 28mm x 24mm prints then use a viewer to make the images look larger the results will be very unsatisfactory. Very little detail will be visible in the images. If your digital files are printed on the classic silver based photographic paper you will get more details but you still won't get prints as sharp and detailed as slides were.

There are printers that can take a digital file and print it to a slide, which is one way to get high resolution slides for a Realist viewer from your digital images.

If you are determined to try printing on paper then here is how I would do it.

I use Lightroom and I would create a custom print template that would print two 28mm x 24mm images the right separation apart inside a photo border that was 41mm x 101mm in size. The print border would give you guides for cutting the prints apart. It would likely take several trials to get this right.

You should be able to print several of these on a single sheet of 8"x10" paper. You should use high quality glossy paper and inks that give you the least amount of ink dot bleed to maximize resolution.

The alternative is to print as many pairs as possible on a sheet of paper then cut them out and mount them in Realist slide mounts, but you have to carefully align the prints inside the slide mount which would be a royal pain in the backside.