The Strangely Lifelike Future of Print?

Print, apparently, is not only still alive but even more animated than we thought. A group of researchers have demonstrated a "specular microgeometic" paper that makes printed images respond to light source changes as though they were 3-D objects. The effect is very magic mirror.

Tom Malzbender and Ramin Samadani from Hewlett-Packard Laboratorie, with Steven Scher, Adam Crume, and James Davis from the University of California at Santa Cruz, as well as Douglas Dunn from 3M, are behind the prototype. In essence, it's semi-porous with thousands of equal-sized depressions, like little bowels. The depressions can hold ink at angles. When the light source moves, ink visibility change. Figuring out the angles takes some big-time math skills.

"Even diffuse surfaces change appearance, providing a valuable perceptual cue to object shape and material. Unfortunately, when printed on paper, this variability is lost. A photographic print represents just one appearance, regardless of the ambient lighting when the print is viewed." The authors write in the paper "Printing Reflectance Functions."

The paper explaining how they did it is here. Thanks to Todd Huffman for finding this on Gizmodo.