Frequently Asked Questions
  • How do I unsubscribe from the mailing list?
  • How should I cite ImageJ?
  • How can I report a bug?
  • How does "Auto" thresholding work?
  • How can I get text to look better?

    The ImageJ Documenation Wiki has more ImageJ FAQs.

    How do I unsubscribe from the ImageJ mailing list
    As described in "Leaving the List" on the page imagej.net/ij/list.html, send email with the subject and body "UNSUBSCRIBE IMAGEJ" to listserv@list.nih.gov or direct your browser to list.nih.gov/archives/imagej.html and click "Subscribe or Unsubscribe".

    How should I cite ImageJ in a scientific paper?
    Here are three possible ways to reference ImageJ:
    1. Rasband, W.S., ImageJ, U. S. National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA, https://imagej.net/ij/, 1997-2018.

    2. Schneider, C.A., Rasband, W.S., Eliceiri, K.W. "NIH Image to ImageJ: 25 years of image analysis". Nature Methods 9, 671-675, 2012. (This article is available online.)

    3. Abramoff, M.D., Magalhaes, P.J., Ram, S.J. "Image Processing with ImageJ". Biophotonics International, volume 11, issue 7, pp. 36-42, 2004. (This article is available as a PDF.)

    How can I report a bug?
    Report bugs on the Image mailing list or on the image.sc forum. Include the following information:
    • ImageJ version
    • OS version
    • Java version (shown in Help>About ImageJ)
    • Any error messages
    • Steps needed to reproduce the problem
    • If possible, a small, complete and runnable macro that reproduces the bug
    Before sending a bug report, use the Help>Update ImageJ command to upgrade to the latest version of ImageJ, and try to reproduce the bug on more than one machine.

    How does "Auto" thresholding work?
    The "Default" automatic thresholding function used by Image/Adjust/Threshold, Process/Binary/Make Binary and Process/Binary/Convert to Mask divides the image into objects and background. It does this by taking a test threshold and computing the average of the pixels at or below the threshold and pixels above. It then computes the average of those two, increments the threshold, and repeats the process. Incrementing stops when the threshold is larger than the composite average. That is,
    threshold = (average background + average objects)/2
    The code in ImageJ that implements this function is the getAutoThreshold() method in the ImageProcessor class.

    How can I get text to look better?
    On Windows XP, you can get better looking text in menus, dialogs, text windows and the status bar by activating Clear Type, a form of sub-pixel antialiasing:
    • Right click on a blank area of the desktop and choose "Properties"
    • Click on the "Appearance" tab
    • Click "Effects"
    • Check "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts"
    • Select "Clear Type" in the drop down menu
    You can also improve the appearance of tool icons by enabling "Antialiased Tool Icons" in Edit/Options/Misc.

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