There are lot of different ways how to create and watch 3D pictures. 3DJournal mostly writes about anaglyphs, but it can be useful to know other methods as well - and to know, which one can be used in what circumstances.

   Remember - if a picture should be viewed as 3D then the right eye has to get it's own picture and the left eye it's own. These two pictures should slightly differ - and in the difference there is encoded the spatial information.
   The question is, how to deliver to every eye the right picture. There are 2 basic ways: every eye can have it's own image - for example on it's own LCD display; or both eyes have one common picture but the right one sees different part of it then the left one - for example because you use a special glasses and the right eye sees only red colors and the left one only blue and green ones.
  
Stereoscopical pair
   The simplest method is to place the 2 images beside each other. It's really easy - just place one image to the left and one to the right in your favorite graphical editor. But to watch it in 3D isn't very easy - it's necessary to make your eyes to look in a far distance but to focus on the picture. The pictures mustn't be too big - if they are it's impossible to see them in 3D (or you can't be near to them).
   There are some instruments to help people to watch stereoscopic pairs - glasses or special stereoscops. One of this kind of interresting products is PokeScope (www.pokescope.com).
   Similar method to stereoscopic pair is cross-stereoscopic pair. The pictures are one beside the other, but the left one is on the right side and the right one is on the left side. To watch them 3D you should put a finger between your eyes and then move it to the screen - between the right and left picture.
  
Two in one
   The left and right pictures can be in one picture as well. But then it's necessary to separate one part of it for the left eye and the second part for the right one. It can be done in many ways - one way is used in hologram, a different way in 3D display.
   Maybe you can remember "dotted" 3D pictures which were popular a few years ago. The spatial information was coded in slight vertical shift of a texture which was repeated many times in the whole picture. You could watch the 3D picture here quite simply - you has only to be able to focus your eyes "behind" the picture. The 3D objects can't have it's own colors there but use the colors of the texture.
   Another way of creating and watching 3D pictures is anaglyph - a method which is used in 3DJournal. Every eye gets only it's own colors here - and in these colors (exactly - in the vertical shift of the red and cyan/blue/green part) is encoded the spatial information.
   Very good method is polarisation: Light is formed by electromagnetic waves which - in standard circumstances - oscilate in all directions. If you send to one eye only vertical waves (waves which oscilate only in vertical direction) and to the second one the horizontal waves and then use polarisation glasses, which let go the right waves to the right eye - you can see a 3D picture. Polarisatin can't be used with one standard computer monitor, but is used in iMax cinemas.
   Sometimes you can see other interresting methods - for example glasses which slightly horizontally shift different colors - and then are for example red objects in the front and blue objects far away.
   Quite popular are LCD shutter glasses, for example Elsa Revelator. It can be used for PC games and for VHS and TV as well. These glasses quickly open and close their shutters for the right and left eye - when the left eye can see the monitor shows the left picture, when the right eye is "open" then the monitor shows the right picture. It's done very quickly - 100 times per second is minimum, better is 160 times. But there is a problem - to use these glasses you have to have a good monitor which can show pictures with this frequency (which is impossible for LCD monitors now).
  
More ways
   Sometimes - somewhere - you can see other ways of showing 3D pictures. 3D helmets, 3D glasses with 2 color LCDs, 2 monitors separated by a thin wall, 2 tilted mirrors or special 3D displays (you could see it for example at Fraunhofer booth at CeBIT 2003).
   There is no perfect solution - cheap, light, full color and watchable from many angles... But maybe sometimes in the future we will have 3D monitors as a standard equipment at our computers.
(3DJournal)