[ELI5] how do magic eye pictures work?

Question

[ELI5] how do magic eye pictures work?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Depth perception works by your eyes receiving slightly different images and extracting distance information from that. Magic Eye images use repeating patterns to fool your brain to think your eyes are focusing on a single point that’s actually two different points on the page (these two points are about 1-pattern cycle apart). This allows your brain to overlay the page on itself at an offset, creating the differences needed for depth perception.

Fun fact: If you can manage to focus on a point *closer* than the page, you can perceive a depth-flipped “negative” version of the image.