Lenticular Printing

Lenticular Printing

My first blog post here! Actually, first blog ever. I'll try and keep it short - just message me if you want more detail or have questions.

John Duder posted a triptych of a lenticular print I made from one of his images; when I saw the original image on his site it had two versions, a monochrome and a colour. Which to prefer? I looked at both, one then the other and it served to heighten the appreciation of the image, so I thought I'd try a 'lenticular' version so the image changed from one to the other with viewing angle. I could then move my viewpoint from left to right and back again as much as I wished! Not a new idea, lenticular painting has been around for a long time - see https://www.kongernessamling.dk/en/rosenborg/object/double-portrait/

The concept is simple, take two images, slice them in Photoshop, reassemble on a new expanded canvass, print, fold the print into 90 degree ridges then mount on a board, keeping the ridge - ridge distance the same for each pair of folds. The print could be mounted with tape, or glued to a board, framed if good enough!

So here are some comments on things I learnt from trying this out!

Choose the image carefully. It will likely be first looked at head on sliced and reassembled, so it needs to work as an 'image' on its own, abstract, eye catching with some impact. It needs to invite the viewer to explore the underling images, to move their viewpoint... Johns image was perfect for this. The sliced head on image was interesting, eye catching and erotic. I'd carefully chosen the central fold point, moving the two images together then apart to find the best point for this. Also key parts of the image were places away from the valley or peak folds

Start small, practice, and don't make the folds too narrow. Aim for 3-5 cm for the strip in the final print. This makes the folding much easier and helps with accuracy on mounting. It is also much quicker on photoshop!

I'm sure this could be automated, but I chose to slice manually in Photoshop. Import the two images. Resize them to the same dimensions. Expand the canvas on both to give a border for alignment etc. I found a black extension, with an outer grey was good; the outer facilitates scribing for folding.

Set up another canvass that is twice as long as the two. Work from your chosen centre point, selecting slices of equal width from each in turn and pasting them on the wide third canvass. You need to know what you have already transferred, so clear or eg invert the slice you have just taken so you know where to take the next one from

If your computer is memory challenged and starts slowing up, you might need to periodically flatten the images. Make sure you select 'merged' when copying, or you might get a blank.

If all has gone well, you should end up with an aligned and sliced image. You can adjust to remove any thin black or white lines where your slices might not be exact. This won't show up.

Tomorrow I'll talk about print preparation, folding and mounting.

Thanks for reading this!