this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
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As a not quite middle aged dude, I only just now figured out how to see magic eye stuff. I tried a couple times in elementary school but didn't get it so I stopped. Had a few drinks earlier, stumbled on some magic eye pic that I could see clear as day and it blew my mind a little

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[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

Yes, you have to imagine you are looking into a mirror at yourself and focus your eyes on that place; look past the image.

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Yep. There was one on the Sunday comics page every week when I was a kid, and I learned how to do it then. I never understood the people who can't do it, or thought it was fake.

[–] morphballganon@lemmy.world 5 points 4 hours ago

Yes.

The instructions say don't cross your eyes but that's horseshit and probably why so many people fail to see them.

My method is to cross my eyes, then uncross them slowly until the 3d effect appears, then hold on that position.

[–] RBWells@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Not usually, no.

[–] Deestan@lemmy.world 6 points 7 hours ago

Someone made a modified version of Quake back in the day, that rendered to stereoscopic 3D in a white noise pattern.

It was such a mindfuck to play!

You get 3D depth but no colors or shades or contrast. It's just shapes moving. So doors that were flush with the wall were impossible to see, but enemies in dark rooms were fully visible because there is no light or dark.

I like to imagine I got to experience what a bat sees with echolocation.

[–] Deestan@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago

Yes. I can change my vision's focal point and focus distance at will, so it's usually easy even though my eyesight is getting fucky with age.

[–] BreadOven@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago

I finally realized how to reliably do it in my early 20s (a while ago now) but still can to this day. Just have to start with it at my face haha.

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 5 points 9 hours ago
[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 4 points 8 hours ago

Yeah, but I have to stick my face right up close and slowly move it away to do so.

Phone/tablet screens work best for it.

[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 7 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

My parents were of the opinion they were an elaborate hoax until they had me draw what I saw in one of them.

This was in a newspaper 30 or so years ago maybe. The image was accompanied by a depth-map image of what should be visible, but they covered that up. Then they asked if I'd looked at the newspaper before them because, even with my terrible art skills, it was clearly what was in the depth-map version.

I think they believed me in the end though.

[–] TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 hours ago

thinking it's a joke is REALLY funny to me

[–] MycelialMass@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

Im in my 30s and learned a few years ago, my brother in law showed me how. Was super cool, I had always thought it was people trolling

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 hours ago

It's harder than it was before I needed bifocals, but yeah.

Once you learn the trick of it, it gets easier to do.

I wanna say I was late teens/early twenties when they first started showing up in my area, and I stood in the store I first saw one for like a half hour trying to see the image. My vision was kinda bad across the board, even then. But I got the first one, which was a boat, and then flipped through the rest of the selection they had, maybe five or six different ones?

But any time I got new glasses, it would take a few minutes to adjust when I'd run across one again. Same if I needed new ones.

They really are fun

[–] LostXOR@fedia.io 8 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

I can view the convergent (cross-eyed) ones no problem. I managed once to focus on the divergent ones with like 30 minutes of practice, but I had trouble focusing normally afterwards for like an hour so I haven't tried since.

[–] TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Ya I was wondering the whole time if this was going to cause some long term damage

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 5 points 11 hours ago

It's a skill. You get better with practice.

[–] Oyml77@lemmy.today 3 points 9 hours ago

I can, but it is sometimes tricky. Usually I can make the image go into 3D mode without too much trouble, but I sometimes can't figure out what I'm supposed to be seeing. Like, I can tell that things are at different depths but I have a hard time resolving it into a complete cohesive image. I think it is mostly due to the weird random pattern that makes up the image and the difficulty in finding how the edges work together. It could just be shitty stereograms, though, since most of them work fine.

[–] Pulptastic@midwest.social 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

With some effort I can even see the image in the small thumbnail on a magazine or webpage. I have not yet been able to see them negative where they go into the screen instead of coming out of it.

[–] TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 hours ago

can you cross your eyes?

[–] LadyButterfly@reddthat.com 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Never, ever been able to see them but then I'm neurodiverse

[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 2 points 10 hours ago

FWIW, I can see them and am probably some level of ADHD or autistic. I would have expected the correlation to be the other way around to be honest, i.e. more neurodiverse folks can see magic eye images than neurotypicals, but our two data points aren't enough to say one way or the other, only that maybe neurodiversity has nothing to do with the ability after all.

[–] Nemo@slrpnk.net 5 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Nope! But I've made them. I needed to go find someone with more normal eyes to test my creations for me, though.

[–] TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Nemo@slrpnk.net 1 points 33 minutes ago

You need a repeating visual pattern, a fairly busy one. Then you need a greyscale image of what you want the "magic" picture to be. You deform the repeating pattern by the intensity of the greyscale image.

When your two eyes overlay the background images, your brain highlights the distortions and interprets them as depth... at least if your eyes are good enough to give your brain that information in the first place.

If you want to know more, the algorithm to do this is public, and you can set it up in eg. javascript in an afternoon.

[–] Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 4 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Stereograms? Yeah I can. I've even made them myself.

[–] TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

How did ya make one?

[–] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Are those still being made? I haven't seen one in ages. But yeah I could see em.

[–] TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Holy shit! I don't recall them being on this impressive! This thing's got over ~~half~~ a dozen levels of dept to it!

The more I look at it and it ends adjust the more I realize now complex it is. The the trees have multiple layers of leaves. This is insane!

[–] Venus_Ziegenfalle@feddit.org 3 points 11 hours ago

Yeah I just relax my eyes and then focus the book without moving my line of sight

[–] Acamon@lemmy.world 6 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

I love them! Generally find that once you get one it's a lot easier. I find that if I've not looked at one for a while, and 8k kit getting it, and I go back to the first one I got (some boxing kangaroos) and normally it just clicks again.

My partner can't see them, and is convinced it's just a dumb hoax that people on the Internet play pretending they can see them.

[–] BroBot9000@lemmy.world 9 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Absolutely loved them as a kid! Had a quite a few books.

You can do them two different ways. The normal way with the objective popping out towards you and an inverted way with crossing your eyes that inverts the shape.

[–] TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world 6 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure I did it the cross eyed way. I'm doo trunk to understand how to do it another way

[–] BroBot9000@lemmy.world 6 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Bring the page close to your nose, let your eyes kinda naturally loose focus from distance. Then slowly start to pull the page back and you should get it.

Kinda difficult to describe.

Check back when you are sober and see if you get it to work.

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

This works, but the quicker method for me was to hold the book over my head, out of my line of sight while I focused my eyes on something a little farther away (a few feet away is fine). Then you can simply move the book downward into your field of vision while refusing to let your eyes refocus. It should be blurry, because you're still focusing past it, despite it being right in front of your face. Then just relax and let your brain do the work.

This method got by far the quickest and most reliable results for me, most pop suddenly into view in just a couple seconds.

I think this method works best because you're using established muscle memory to focus your eyes on an object at a measurable, consistent distance, and then just not letting them change. Removes several variables from the equation.

[–] TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Maybe I have it mixed up then because the way I'm doing it is losing focus and letting it adjust until I see something. I thought I was going crosseyed but I didn't have a mirror so I can't be sure.

[–] asmoranomar@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

The way this works is that the image is designed to appear 'beyond' the surface it is printed on. It's much easier to relax your eyes and pretend you're looking at what's 'behind' the paper. Kind of like 3d chalk art on the road in a way.

The other way of crossing your eyes works because you're swapping the left and right eye, which gives a different, inverted appearance. Instead of a foreground image popping out of the background, it looks like the other way. Like looking in a box, kinda.

I can do both, but the latter is more difficult, sometimes requires a specific distance, and can be painful if you force it. If the image is too big, you may only be able to see a part of it. I think the first method is easier to do and to learn/train. Either way, you aren't looking at what's 'on the surface'.

...

The best way I can explain is: pretend you're sitting on the toilet, really tired and you have nothing to look at so you just lose focus and gaze at random stuff. When the tiles or cracks start to make pictures that aren't there, that's kind of the effect you want.

[–] TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

I'm fairly certain I'm doing the distance thing but at the same time I am fairly certain I am looking inside a 3d box

https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicEye/s/ogZeqQWwpY

That's the piece that made it click for me

[–] asmoranomar@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Oh that one is a good one, it's very busy. Using the first method the trees are on the 'bottom' and everything progressively pops out with the fish/turtle on 'top'.

The other way is reverse, the trees are on the 'top' and the fish are on the 'bottom' (like I'm looking in that 'box'). It's also really hard to see the whole picture this way, but that's just me.

Also, 'In a Box' might not be the best analogy, you can make one that intentionally feels like you're looking inside something -- it's just that most of these are made to pop out at you.

[–] BroBot9000@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

For the cross eye version you just need to hold out the page at normal viewing distance and cross your eyes till the 3d image pops.

Sounds like you are doing it the regular way. Which is the more difficult one for most people that have issues with magic eyes.

Glad you got to experience them!

[–] TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

I'm glad too, I have so many things to look at now lol

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago

I think I usually saw the inverted version. I could make out the shapes, but they never popped out.

[–] faltryka@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I have tried to see them so many times but have never even gotten an inkling.

[–] TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicEye/s/ogZeqQWwpY

This is what made it work for me, I was looking down a hallway then glanced at that pic keeping my head and phone still then letting it focus on the picture as if it was in the distance, the amount of detail is so crazy

[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 4 points 13 hours ago

I couldn't because really bad astigmatism, but after ICL surgery I could. Magic Eye is really cool, binged the greatest hits after I found out I could see them.

[–] trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago

I used to, but its been years since I've tried, and I've had to get stronger glasses a couple of time since then.