To install ImageJ, download the Mac OS X .tar.gz file and double-click on it to extract the "ImageJ (OS X)" folder. To run ImageJ, open this folder and double-click on the ImageJ icon.
Memory
With ImageJ 1.32 or later, use the Edit/Options/Memory command to make more than 192MB of memory available to ImageJ.
With ImageJ 1.31, control-click on the ImageJ application, select "Show Package Contents" and open the "Contents" folder. Then open the "Info.plist" file by dragging and dropping on the TextEdit icon in the Dock and editing the line "<string>-Xms32m -Xmx192m</string>", which is near the end of the file. (If TextEdit is not on the Dock, drag it from the Application folder to the Dock.) As an example, to make 500MB available, change the line to "<string>-Xms32m -Xmx500m</string>".
With ImageJ 1.30 and earlier, use a text editor such as TextEdit to edit the line "com.apple.mrj.application.vm.options=-Xmx128M" in ImageJ/Contents/Resources/MRJApp.properties. Another way to make more memory available to ImageJ is by running from the command line and using the -Xmx option. The maximum amount of memory that can be allocated is about 1.7 GB.
Upgrading
To upgrade to the latest version of ImageJ, replace the ij.jar file in the ImageJ application with a newer one from http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/upgrade/. To do this, control-click on the ImageJ application, select "Show Package Contents", and then drag the newer ij.jar into the Contents/Resources/Java folder.
Drag and Drop
The OS X version of ImageJ opens images, text files, ROIs and LUTs that are dropped on the ImageJ icon.
Known Problems
Switching Beween Java 1.4.1 and Java 1.31
It is possible to revert to Java 1.3.1 when running Java programs from the command line
or by double clicking on a jar file by typing these two commands into a Terminal window:
Here is a simple AppleScript that sends commands to Terminal to have it automatically launch ImageJ:
About the Icon
Adding a JAR File
Some plugins require adding a JAR file to ImageJ. In ImageJ 1.31 or later, this is done by copying
the JAR file into the plugins folder or an immediate subfolder of the plugins folder, then restarting
ImageJ. To compile a plugin that uses a JAR file, copy the JAR file to /Library/Java/Extensions.
The ImageJ double-clickable application uses Java 1.4.1 or later. To use Java 1.3.1,
control-click on the ImageJ application,
select "Show Package Contents", open the "Contents" folder, drag and drop "Info.plist" on TextEdit,
then change the
value of the Root>Java>JVMVersion property from "1.4+" to "1.3.1". Duplicate ImageJ before making
these changes to create separate Java 1.3.1 and Java 1.4 versions.
cd /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions
This switches the symbolic link for the current JDK to 1.3.1.
You can view what the CurrenJDK is pointing to by running (in the same directory):
sudo ln -sfh 1.3.1 CurrentJDK
ls -al
Running from the Command Line
To run ImageJ from the command line, open a Terminal window, cd to the ImageJ directory, then use
the java command to run ImageJ. The easiest way to do this is to drag the ImageJ folder to the Terminal Window,
type return, then type:
Or if ij.jar is in the current directory, type:
java -jar -mx256m ImageJ.app/Contents/Resources/Java/ij.jar
(or java -mx256m -cp ImageJ.app/Contents/Resources/Java/ij.jar ij.ImageJ)
The -Xmx256m switch specifies that ImageJ will have available a maximum of 256MB of RAM.
java -jar -Xmx256m ij.jar
(or java -Xmx256m -cp ij.jar ij.ImageJ)
With OS X 10.1 or later, you can also run ImageJ by double-clicking on ij.jar.
tell application "Terminal"
run
do script with command "cd /Applications/ImageJ
java -jar -mx350m ./ImageJ.app/Contents/Resources/Java/IJ.jar"
end tell
The ImageJ icon for OS X is based on a photograph by
Tom Grill
of a
Hartnack microscope, circa 1870's, at
www.arsmachina.com. An
article
on O'Reilly's
macdevcenter.com
site explains how to create photorealistic
icons for Mac OS X.
