This paper presents design and implementation of a color wavefront holographic printer. The printer output is a white light viewable volume hologram composed as a two-dimensional (2-D) array of elemental holograms. The three-dimensional (3-D) input data for the printer are encoded as computer generated holograms (CGHs) displayed in succession on an amplitude type spatial light modulator. The printer optical head extracts and demagnifies the beam with the 3-D object information from the beam diffracted by the modulator to produce a small size elemental hologram. This allows for mosaic delivery of exposures at primary colors with each elemental hologram acting as a single color channel. Computer generation of digital contents is accelerated by design of a phase-added stereogram approach based on partitioning of each CGH. Bright 3-D reconstruction with a motion parallax at saturated colors from holograms of test objects is presented. The holograms are printed on a silver-halide emulsion. The achieved high quality proves feasibility of recording analog color volume holograms from digital contents by mosaic delivery of the primary colors. Two quality enhancement approaches are proposed and tested.

The paper presents design and implementation of a color wavefront holographic printer for white light viewable holograms of three-dimensional (3D) objects from digital contents. The printed hologram was composed as a two-dimensional (2D) array of elemental holograms. The 3D information was encoded in computer generated holograms displayed in succession on an amplitude spatial light modulator. Filtering of the light beam diffracted from the modulator extracted the beam coming from the object. Its demagnified version was recorded onto the holographic emulsion. The small size elemental hologram made possible application of mosaic delivery of exposures at primary colors. A modified phase-added stereogram approach was proposed to accelerate computer generation of digital contents. We achieved bright 3D reconstruction with a motion parallax at saturated colors from holograms of test objects that were printed on a silver-halide emulsion. Two quality enhancement approaches were developed.

Holography aims to record and regenerate volume filling light fields to reproduce ghost-like 3-D images that are optically indistinguishable from their physical 3-D originals. Digital holographic video displays are pixelated devices on which digital holograms can be written at video rates. Spatial light modulators (SLMs) are used for such purposes in practice; even though it is desirable to have SLMs that can modulate both the phase and amplitude of the incident light at each pixel, usually amplitude-only or phase-only SLMs are available. Many laboratories have reported working prototypes using different designs. Size and resolution of the SLMs are quite demanding for satisfactory 3-D reconstructions. Space–bandwidth product (SBP) seems like a good metric for quality analysis. Even though moderate SBP is satisfactory for a stationary observer with no lateral or rotational motion, the required SBP quickly increases when such motion is allowed. Multi-SLM designs, especially over curved surfaces, relieve high bandwidth requirements, and therefore, are strong candidates for futuristic holographic video displays. Holograms are quite robust to noise and quantization. It is demonstrated that either laser or light-emitting diode (LED) illumination is feasible. Current research momentum is increasing with many exciting and encouraging results.