In the 2D-to-3D conversion method presented, a series of fast-executing 2D image- or pixel-processing operations are used to transform flat 2D RGB images and video into Red-Cyan Stereoscopic 3D Anaglyph images and video. The output of this process is viewable in stereoscopic 3D on any color screen or display device, using passive red-cyan lensed Anaglyph 3D glasses. The method presented is designed to be deployed as both a hardware “2D-to-3D conversion chip”, and as a short, fast, highly parallelizable realtime algorithm running on programmable graphics hardware like a GPU. The method presented upgrades 2D visual content to stereoscopic 3D, improves the lighting, contrast and color of the content, and also increases its optical sharpness by as much as 200%. Both the left-eye and right-eye image created by the method are “synthetic”—digitally generated. The method produces fairly accurate colors, despite 3D glasses with colored lenses being used.