There are many different ways of creating and viewing stereoscopic 3D images but they all rely on independently presenting different images to the left and right eye.

Anaglyphs are a straightforward way of presenting stereo pair images is the stereoscopic 3D effect achieved by means of encoding each eye’s image using filters of different (usually chromatically opposite) colors, typically red and cyan. Anaglyph 3D images contain two differently filtered colored images, one for each eye. When viewed through the “color-coded” “anaglyph glasses”, each of the two images reaches the eye it’s intended for, revealing an integrated stereoscopic image. The visual cortex of the brain fuses this into the perception of a three-dimensional scene or composition.

There are three types of anaglyph glasses in common use: red-blue, red-cyan, and red-green.