The Magic Eye Books – Blowing Your Mind Since 1991

The Magic Of Stereograms

The Magic Eye Book series were released starting in 1991 and since then it blew everyone’s minds. They were featured in New York’s best sellers list for 73 weeks in total. More than 20 million copies across 25 languages have been sold. At first glance, these are books full of pages with strange patterns. You can’t really make sense out of them. The magic happens when you follow the “viewing instructions” and you’ll suddenly see amazing 3D images pop out of the page. The images are actually stereograms,  a picture within a picture. These computer-generated images give a three-dimensional representation of a solid object when viewed correctly. These book series are responsible for countless hours of entertainment.

How Does It Work? Is this Sorcery?

No, it is not sorcery. Magic Eye provides simple instructions:

“Hold the center of the printed image right up to your nose. It should be blurry. Focus as though you are looking through the image into the distance. Very slowly move the image away from your face until the two squares above the image turn into three squares. If you see four squares, move the image farther away from your face until you see three squares. If you see one or two squares, start over!

When you clearly see three squares, hold the page still, and the hidden image will magically appear. Once you perceive the hidden image and depth, you can look around the entire 3D image. The longer you look, the clearer the illusion becomes. The farther away you hold the page, the deeper it becomes. Good Luck!”

For example on this image:

You should be able to see this in 3D:

Bottom Line It Is Pretty Cool

There is a sense of challenge and accomplishment in seeing these 3D images out of a picture that makes no sense. It gets even better when you are the only one out of the group who can actually see it. The books or images online usually provide the answer to what the 3D image is. It is recommended that you try to see the images printed on paper since stereograms work better that way. To my amazement, the book series are still being sold online after 25 years. But you can also go online and print these images on paper too. Bottom line these images are pretty cool and it’s like nothing you have experienced before.