Edit Menu

Undo
Reverses the effect of the most recent image editing or filtering operation. Note that operations on entire stacks cannot be reversed using Undo.

Cut
Copies the contents of the current image selection to the internal clipboard and fills it with the current background color.

Copy
Copies the contents of the current image selection to the internal clipboard. If there is no selection, copies the entire active image. The amount of image data copied is shown in the status bar. Cut, Copy and Paste of images to other applications is currently not supported. Select the Fill With Clipboard option in the File/New dialog to create a new window from the contents of ImageJ's internal clipboard.

Paste
Inserts the contents of the internal clipboard into the active image. The pasted image is automatically selected, allowing it to be dragged with the mouse. Click outside the selection to terminate the paste. Select Edit/Undo to abort the paste operation.

Paste Control...
After a Paste, use the Paste Control popup menu to control how the image currently being pasted is transferred to the destination image.

Except for "Blend" and "Transparent", the Paste Control transfer modes are the same as those listed in the description of Process/Image Calculator. The "Blend" mode is the same the Image Calculator "Average" mode. In "Transparent" mode, white pixels are transparent and all other pixels are copied unchanged. "Transparent" mode only works with 8-bit and RGB images.

Clear
Erases the contents of the selection to the current background color (normally white). The backspace (or delete) key is a handy shortcut for this command. Alt-click in the Image/Colors window to change the background color.

Clear Outside
Erases the area outside the current image selection to the background color. Alt-click in the Image/Colors window to change the background color.

Fill
Fills the current selection with the current foreground color. The foreground color is set by using the dropper tool to "pick up" a new color from an image. Alt-click with any other tool, except the magnifying glass, to temporarily switch to the dropper tool. Colors can be "picked up" from the Image/Colors window using any tool. The dropper tool icon in the tool bar is drawn in the foreground color and the frame around it is drawn in the background color.

Draw
Outlines the current selection using the current foreground color and line width. The "Colors" window, opened with the Image/Colors command, provides a palette of drawing colors. Colors can be "picked" up from the "Colors" window without having to switch to the dropper tool. Use the Edit/Options/Line Width command, or double-click on the freeline tool, to change the line width.

Invert
Creates a reversed image, similar to a photographic negative, of the entire image or selection.

Selection>
The commands in this submenu create, delete or modify selections.

Select All
Creates a rectangular selection that is the same size as the image.

Select None
Deactivates the selection in the active image.

Restore Selection
Restores the previous selection to its original position. A selection is saved when you:

  • Delete the selection by clicking outside of it
  • Draw a new selection
  • De-activate the image containing the selection
  • Close the image containing the selection
  • Open a new selection using File/New
  • Use a command that deletes or modifies the selection
You can transfer a selection from one image to another by activating the image with the selection, activating the destination image, then pressing shift-e (the keyboard shortcut for Restore Selection).

[Selections]

Fit Spline
Fits a cubic spline curve to a polygon or polyline selection.

Fit Ellipse
Replaces an area selection with the best fit ellipse. The ellipse will have the same area, orientation and centroid as the original selection. The same fitting algorithm is used to measure the major and minor axis lengths and angle when "Fit Ellipse" is selected in Analyze/Set Measurements.

Convex Hull
Replaces a polygon of freehand selection with its convex hull, which can be thought of as a rubber band wrapped tightly around the points that define the selection.

Options>
Use commands in this submenu to change various ImageJ user preference settings.

Line Width...
Displays a dialog box that allows the width of lines generated by the Draw command to be changed.

JPEG Quality...
Use this dialog to specify the compression level use by the File/Save As/Jpeg command. Requesting a higher degree of compression (a lower value) will produce smaller files, but poorer image quality.

Fonts...
Opens a small window with three popup menus for specifying the type face, size and style of the font used by the text tool.

Profile Plot Options...
Use this dialog to control how plots generated by Analyze/Plot Profile are displayed.

Plot Width and Plot Height specify the size of the plot in pixels. If Fixed Y-axis Scale is checked, the y-axis range is fixed and the specified Y Min and Y Max values are used, otherwise, plots are scaled based on the minimum and maximum gray values. Check Do Not Save X-Values to have "List", "Save" and "Copy" in profile plot windows display or save only y-values. Check Auto-close to have profile plot windows automatically closed when "List", "Save" or "Copy" are clicked on. Check Vertical Profile to generate row average plots of rectangular areas instead of the default column average plots.

Conversions...
Use this dialog to set options that control how images are converted from one type to another.

[Dialog]

Check Scale When Converting to have ImageJ scale from min-max to 0-255 when converting from 16-bits or 32-bits to 8-bits or to scale from min-max to 0-65535 when converting from 32-bits to 16-bits.

If Unweighted RGB to Grayscale Conversion is checked, the formula gray=(red+green+blue)/3 is used to convert RGB images to grayscale. If this option is not checked, the formula gray=0.299*red+0.587*green+0.114*blue is used.

Memory...
Use this dialog to specify the maximum amount of memory available to ImageJ.

[Dialog]

Java applications such as ImageJ will only use the memory allocated to them but this dialog allows the user to allocate more than the default 128MB. Note that specifying more than 75% of real RAM could result in virtual RAM being used, which may cause ImageJ to become slow and unstable. Also note that this dialog cannot be used to set the memory allocation if ImageJ is run from the command line or by double-clicking on ij.jar.

[Screen shot]

Click on the status bar and ImageJ will display the amount of memory currently in use and the maximum amount available. In the illustration, 129MB out of the available 1000MB, or 12%, is in use. Clicking on the status bar also runs the Java garbage collector, which will attempt to reclaim unused memory.

Misc...
Displays a dialog box containing miscellaneous options.

[Misc dialog]

The Divide by Zero Value specifies the value used when Process/Image Calculator detects a divide by zero while dividing one 32-bit real image by another. The default is infinity. In addition to numeric values, "infinity" (positive or negative infinity), "max" (largest positive value) and "NaN" (Not-a-Number) can be entered as the Divide by Zero Value value.

Check Use Pointer Cursor and ImageJ will use an arrow cursor instead of the default crosshair that is sometimes difficult to see on grayscale images in areas of medium brightness. This option can also be used to work around a bug on Windows where the text cursor is sometimes used in place of the crosshair. Note that ImageJ must be restarted when running v1.33l and earlier.

Check Hide "Process Stack?" Dialog to suppress the dialog that asks "Process all xx slices?" (only the current slice will be processed).

Check Antialiased Text to have the text tool create smoothed text and for the text displayed in histogram windows and plot windows to be smoothed. Requires Java 1.2 or later.

Check Open/Save Using JFileChooser to enable versions of File/Open and File/Save As/ that use the Java JFileChooser instead of the native OS file open and save dialogs. The main advantage of JFileChooser is the ability to open multiple files by shift-clicking to select multiple contiguous files and control-clicking to select more than one individual file. On the other hand, it is slower, uses more memory, and does not behave like the file open and save dialogs used in other applications.

Check Debug Mode to enable display of debugging messages in the "Log" window. Close the "Log" window to disable display of debugging messages.

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