6/13/2023 0 Comments Insert scale bar imagej![]() Position: Lower left corner is a safe place.Avoid red, green, or blue bars, as these colors might be considered part of the image. Color: Scale bars should have a high contrast with the background.Length: Be kind to your audience and use simple units, such as 100um, 50um, 10 or 2um.Now the audience can calculate the actual size of objects and relate image with reality. By using Analyze > Tools > Scale Bar we can add the scale bar with a user-defined length, width, color, position, and label. With ImageJ/FIJI files from any microscope system can be read in along with their scaling information (shout-out to Curtis and Melissa and the Bio-Formats project!). We therefore include scale bars in microscopy images. We don’t have a clear mental image of the size of a salt grain or sesames seed to reliably use them to scale for instance cells**. Using familiar objects for scale isn’t possible for tiny things. We often include in images a familiar object of a standard size for scale: a penny placed on a rock, a person standing beside a large animal or in a landscape, a measuring tape next to a fossil (or an Earth worm!).īar = 1cm (Earth worm lovingly raised by Jeff Woodruff). Today however we study invisible processes and structures that are unfamiliar to most of our colleagues and therefore have to include scales in our images.Ĭomment from Benjamin Moore in nature (1910) when reviewing a biochemistry handbook. Even in the beginning of the 20 th century, images were often considered a waste of space and scales unnecessary as scientists were familiar with each other’s apparatuses and objects. ![]() ![]() To my knowledge, neither Merian nor her predecessors from Antiquity, Byzantium, or Renaissance included scales in their medical and natural science images*. Scales give the reader the key for aligning the image content with reality. Merian evidently was genius in choosing frame and magnification in her drawings, but her pictures lack indications of scale*, which are essential in today’s science images. Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) – “Das kleine Buch der Tropenwunder”, Insel Verlag, Leipzig Wiesbaden 1954, Public Domain, Merian, who lived from 1647 to 1717, is renowned for her exceptional illustrations of biological specimens and gained recognition as a scientist for her nature observations, for example, of insect metamorphosis. I recently saw drawings by Maria Sybilla Merian at Kupferstichkabinett Berlin and the University Library Dresden. ![]()
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