3D Maker

Be prepared for some joy and a lot of frustration with 3D Maker. Getting the most out of this application will require you to understand 3D terminology, have sets of photos optimized for 3D, and own a pair of those red-green movie glasses.

3D Maker offers a floating palette with big, friendly buttons and a menu bar for additional tasks and filter. We selected a picture and clicked a button to convert. The application quickly rendered it in 3D (albeit with a large watermark in the trial version). Testing other 3D options quickly led to frustration. 3D Maker lacks certain basic features, such as a way to zoom out of a large image--absurd, since you may not be able to see all of the object you want to select. After selecting what we could, we tried to create a Stereogram; result was like snow on a television set. Next, we tried to create a 3D Sphere. This produced a small, streaky square. At this point, the only options were to Save as 3DMF (3D MetaFile) or Exit. But in trial mode, you cannot save as 3DMF. We right-clicked on the image border to close it, resulting in endless exceptions leading us to force-quit. Available in HMTL and PDF, the Help file caters to those already familiar with 3D settings. In many cases it identifies various settings without explanation.

All told, if you are familiar with 3D tools, this program could be a quick and easy solution. But if you are merely looking for a new way to spice up your photos, frustration rather than fun will be your likely reward.