Dave Kay's Tracking Page

Track Image Processing: Print Awareness: Debris

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I'm experimenting with some photographic and computer-processed images that help make tracks stand out. Here's the first one of my experimental images, and how it works:

There are two images below that work sort of like the "magic" dot-pattern images you may have seen in shopping malls or in books. You have to play funny tricks with your eyeballs to see the "magic," and the tricks take some practice.

The basic idea is to get your brain to create a combined image from the two images. To do this, you will need to cross your eyes slightly.

  1. Hold your index finger at arm's length near the screen, vertically, along the border between the two images.
  2. Keeping your eyes focused on the finger, slowly bring the finger towards your face until it is about six inches from your nose.
  3. You will notice two trees merging to form a single tree behind your finger, but keep focusing on your finger. Slowly transfer your focus to that single tree; if it splits, return your focus to your finger and try again. Once you can focus on the single tree, gaze at it for a while until your brain accepts it and it stabilizes. Then slowly lower your hand. Ignore all the other junk in your field of vision and focus on the one single, central image. Keep trying until you can hold this image steady.
  4. You will see areas of the image that "dance" or "pop up" slightly. These are my tracks! They wind from the lower left of the image towards the right side of the tree and across in front of it. They are strongest near the tree.

Copyright 1996, David C. Kay. All Rights Reserved.