About Us
Final sale!
Our company produced wonderful
handmade greeting cards. We used Dufex prints which are the last in stock and
will never be produced anymore. If you love
extraordinary and rare greeting cards, then you are in right place.
Technology
Lenticular printing is a multi-step technology consisting of creating a
lenticular image from at least two images, and combining it with a lenticular
lens. This technology can be used to create various frames of animation (for a motion effect), offsetting the
various layers at different increments (for a 3D effect), or simply to show a set of
alternate images which may appear to transform into each other. Once the
various images are collected, they are flattened into individual, different
frame files, and then digitally combined into a single final file in a process
called interlacing.
Lenticular
printing has been used to produce movie posters, such as this advert for Species II, which morphs between two different character
appearances when the angle of viewing changes.
From
there the interlaced image can be printed directly to the back (smooth side) of
the lens or it can be printed to a substrate (ideally a synthetic paper) and
laminated to the lens. When printing to the backside of the lens, the critical
registration of the fine "slices" of interlaced images must be
absolutely correct during the lithographic or screen
printing process
or "ghosting" and poor imagery might result. Ghosting also occurs on
choosing the wrong set of images for flip.
The
combined lenticular print will show two or more different images simply by changing the angle from which the print is viewed. If more
(30+) images are used, taken in a sequence, one can even show a short video of about one second. Though normally
produced in sheet form, by interlacing simple images or different colors
throughout the artwork, lenticular images can also be created in roll form with
3D effects or multi-color changes. Alternatively, one can use several images of
the same object, taken from slightly different angles, and then create a
lenticular print which shows a stereoscopic 3D effect. 3D effects can only be
achieved in a side to side (left to right) direction, as the viewer's left eye
needs to be seeing from a slightly different angle than the right to achieve
the stereoscopic effect. Other effects, like morphs, motion, and zooms work
better (less ghosting or latent effects) as top-to-bottom effects, but can be
achieved in both directions.
There are
several film processors that will take two or more pictures and create
lenticular prints for hobbyists, at a reasonable cost. For slightly more money
one can buy the equipment to make lenticular prints at home. This is in
addition to the many corporate services that provide high volume lenticular
printing.
There are
many commercial end uses for lenticular images, which can be made from PVC, APET, acrylic, and PETG, as well as other materials. While PETG
and APET are the most common, other materials are becoming popular to
accommodate outdoor use and special forming due to the increasing use of
lenticular images on cups and gift cards. Lithographic lenticular printing
allows for the flat side of the lenticular sheet to have ink placed directly
onto the lens, while high-resolution photographic lenticulars typically have
the image laminated to the lens.
Recently,
large format (over 2m) lenticular images have been used in bus shelters and
movie theaters. These are printed using an oversized lithographic press. Many
advances have been made to the extrusion of lenticular lens and the way it is
printed which has led to a decrease in cost and an increase in quality.
Lenticular images have recently seen a surge in activity, from gracing the
cover of the May 2006 issue of Rolling
Stone to trading
cards, sports
posters and signs in stores that help to attract buyers.
The
newest lenticular technology is manufacturing lenses with flexo, inkjet and
screen-printing techniques. The lens material comes in a roll or sheet which is
fed through flexo or offset printing systems at high speed, or printed with UV
inkjet machines (usually flat-beds that enable a precise registration). This
technology allows high volume 3D lenticular production at low cost.
Structure
Images
are interlaced on the substrate
How a
lenticular lens works
Each
image is arranged (slicing) into strips, which are then interlaced with one or
more similarly arranged images (splicing). These are printed on the back of a
piece of plastic, with a series of thin lenses molded into the opposite side.
Alternatively, the images can be printed on paper, which is then bonded to the
plastic. With the new technology, lenses are printed in the same printing
operation as the interlaced image, either on both sides of a flat sheet of
transparent material, or on the same side of a sheet of paper, the image being
covered with a transparent sheet of plastic or with a layer of transparent,
which in turn is printed with several layers of varnish to create the lenses.
The
lenses are accurately aligned with the interlaces of the image, so that light
reflected off each strip is refracted in a slightly different direction, but
the light from all pixels originating from the same original image is sent in
the same direction. The end result is that a single eye looking at the print
sees a single whole image, but two eyes will see different images, which leads
to stereoscopic 3D perception.
Styles of
lenticular prints
There are
three distinct types of lenticular prints, distinguished by how great a change
in angle of view is required to change the image:
Converting
prints
Here two
or more very different pictures are used, and the lenses are designed to
require a relatively large change in angle of view to switch from one image to
another. This allows viewers to easily see the original images, since small
movements cause no change. Larger movement of the viewer or the print causes
the image to flip from one image to another. (The "flip effect".)
Animated images
Here the
distance between different angles of view is "medium", so that while
both eyes usually see the same picture, moving a little bit switches to the
next picture in the series. Usually many sequential images would be used, with
only small differences between each image and the next. This can be used to
create an image that moves ("motion effect"), or can create a
"zoom" or "morph" effect, in which part of the image
expands in size or changes shape as the angle of view changes. The movie poster
of the film Species
II, shown
in this article, is an example of this technique.
3D effects
Here the
change in viewing angle needed to change images is small, so that each eye sees
a slightly different view. This creates a 3D effect without requiring special
glasses, using many images. For example, the Dolby-Phillips Lenticular 3D
display produces 28 different images.[1]
Mounted
lenticular
With
static (non-motorized) lenticular, the viewer either moves the piece or moves
past the piece in order to see the graphic effects. With motorized lenticular,
a motor moves the graphics behind the lens, enabling the graphic effects while
both the viewer and the display remain stationary.
History of
lenticular image process
Images
that change when viewed from different angles predate the development of
lenticular lenses. In 1692 G. A. Bois-Clair, a French painter, created
paintings containing two distinct images, with a grid of vertical laths in front.[2] Different images were visible when the work was
viewed from the left and right sides.
Saturnalia
record with lenticular label that switches from
"Magical love" to a logo.
Han-O-Disc
record with diffraction grating 'Rainbow' film (outside ring), color shifting
Rowlux (middle ring) and "silver balls" Rowlux film (center of
record).
Han-O-Disc
manufactured for Light Fantastic with metal flake outside and Dufex process
print within.
Lenticular
images were popularized from the late 1940s to the mid-1980s by the Vari-Vue
company.[3] Early products included animated
political campaign badges with the slogan "I Like Ike!" and animated
cards that were stuck on boxes of Cheerios.[3] By the late sixties the company marketed about two thousand stock
products including twelve inch square moving pattern and color sheets, large
images (many religious), and a huge range of novelties including badges. The
badge products included the Rolling
Stones' tongue
logo and an early Beatles badge with pictures of the 'fab four'
on a red background.
Some
notable lenticular prints from this time include the limited-edition album
cover for the
Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request, and Saturnalia's Magical Love, a picture
disk with a
lenticular center. Several magazines including Look and Venture
published issues in the 1960s that contained lenticular images. Many of the
magazine images were produced by Crowle Communications (also known as Visual
Panographics). Images produced by the company ranged from just a few
millimeters to 28 by 19.5 inches.
The panoramic cameras used for most of the early lenticular prints were
French-made and weighed about 300 pounds. In the 1930s they were known as
"auto-stereo cameras". These wood and brass cameras had a motorized
lens that moved in a semicircle around the lens' nodal
point. Sheet
transparency film with the lenticular lens overlay was loaded into special dark
slides (about 10×15 inches) and these were then inserted into the camera.
The exposure time was several seconds long, giving time for the motor drive to
power the lens around in an arc.
A related
product produced by a small company in New Jersey was Rowlux. Unlike the
Vari-Vue product, Rowlux used a microprismatic lens structure made by a process
they patented in 1972,[4] and no paper print. Instead, the
plastic (Polycarbonate, flexible PVC and later PETG) was dyed with translucent
colors and the film was usually thin and flexible (from 0.002" in
thickness).
Lenticular
arrays are also used for 3D 'autostereoscopic' television which produces the
illusion of 3D without the use of special glasses. A number of prototypes were
shown in 2009/2010 by companies such as Philips and LG. These systems use
cylindrical lenses slanted from the vertical, or spherical lenses arranged in a
honeycomb pattern - which provides a better resolution.
While not
a true lenticular process, the Dufex Process (Manufactured by F.J. Warren Ltd.)[5] does use a form of lens structure to animate the
image. The process consists of imprintig a metallic foil with an image. The
foil is then laminated to a thin sheet of card stock that has been coated with
a thick layer of wax. The heated lamination press has the Dufex embossing plate
on its upper platen, which has been engraved with 'lenses' at different angles,
designed to match the artwork and reflect light at different intensities
depending on angle of view.
Manufacturing
technology
Producing
Creation
of lenticular images in volume requires printing
presses that are
adapted to print on sensitive thermoplastic materials. Lithographic offset
printing is
typically used, to ensure the images are good quality. Printing presses for
lenticulars must be capable of adjusting image placement in 10 µm steps,
to allow good alignment of the image to the lens array.
Typically,
ultraviolet-cured inks are used. These dry very quickly
by direct conversion of the liquid ink to a solid form, rather than by
evaporation of liquid solvents from a mixture. Powerful (400W per sq. in)
ultraviolet (UV) lamps are used to rapidly cure the ink. This allows lenticular
images to be printed at high speed.