Several sets of lecture notes and tutorials are available for download or on-line access:

• A 90 page, 23 MByte pdf file that includes the numerous image processing and measurement examples from my annual one-day workshops presented at the MSA meetings. Emphasis is on the best workflow and the procedures that can be applied to each step. The examples use Photoshop plus some plug-ins.
• The Molecular Expressions web site hosted by Mike Davidson's group at Florida State University has an on-line set of my lecture notes enhanced by dozens of interactive Java applets, covering many of the topics that I present in a typical one-day tutorial.
• I am frequently asked to provide a brief (one-day or half-day) introductory session on Photoshop, before extended hands-on workshops on image processing and analysis. This is intended to help those unfamiliar with the Adobe Photoshop environment learn about the program's basic functions, general appearance, and those capabilities which it offers that are appropriate for scientific imaging. A 29-page tutorial can be downloaded as a 12MB pdf file. A 2.5 MB zip file containing the images used in the tutorial is also provided.
• Another common concern is the choice of a camera appropriate for use on a light microscope. I personally use a wide variety of cameras, ranging from specialized cameras intended for that application to general purpose digital cameras including single-lens-reflex models with adaptors, and even consumer cameras that look through the microsope eyepiece (which have the advantage of portability). Some of the factors to consider when choosing a camera are described in this brief writeup.
• Lossy compression of images, most often using the JPEG algorithm, is simply unacceptable if they are to be used for scientific or forensic purposes. An article illustrates some of the types of artefacts that are caused, both in photographs and in thresholded binary images intended for measurement.
• A 150 page tutorial showing the step-by-step use of Photoshop and Fovea Pro, which was revised and rewritten for the most recent (version 4.0) release of the software by Reindeer Graphics. The entire tutorial can be downloaded or accessed on-line as a series of pdf files.
• An 11 page condensed summary (containing many of the illustrations) from my invited lecture on forensic image processing and analysis applications, presented at the North Carolina State University Forensic Sciences Symposium, can be downloaded as a pdf file. The entire lecture is also viewable on-line for those who wish to watch it.

Some downloadable Photoshop plug-ins and other goodies:

• The original Fovea Pro 4.0 plugins for Macintosh were written for the PowerPC processor and can only be used with the newer generation Intel computers using Rosetta. A complete set of the plug-ins in native Intel code, and full information on using them, is available here.
• In Photoshop CS4 and CS5, a new feature makes it possible to create a custom panel that provides a logical organization to the functions available in the host program and its plug-ins. I have designed several panels that cover the most commonly used image adjustments (with both automatic and manual routines), feature measurements, and stereological techniques for use in Photoshop (both Windows and Macintosh). Click here for more information and to download the files.
• The widely used (and frequently abused) unsharp mask procedure works by subtracting a Gaussian blurred copy of the image (which removes important detail) from the original. The difference, which is the detail, is then added back to the original to enhance the visibility of steps, lines and edges. However, the process also creates haloes around edges, and produces different results in bright and dark areas of the image. An alternate method that uses rank based (morphological) operators rather than the Gaussian blur avoids these problems and generally produces superior results. A Photoshop plug-in for Windows or Macintosh can be downloaded that implements this method. Once placed in your filters folder it will be listed as Filters > IP*Xtras > RankSharp and will run with no dialog. The accompanying text file explains the parameters used and how they can be adjusted.
• The set of plug-ins written to support The Image Processing Cookbook, 2nd Edition, and used in the workshops and courses that I teach, can be downloaded for either Macintosh or Windows computers. The Read_Me file contains brief descriptions of the routines, which are more fully documented in the Cookbook.

At several meetings in the US and overseas, I have been asked to present a plenary lecture on the characteristics of our human visual system and how it interacts with the images that are obtained from various kinds of microscopy (and other scientific images). The basic message is that humans are not very good observers, that our vision system ignores a lot of information, that having names and labels for recognized features is very important, and that we often think we see what we expect to see. After one recent presentation, urged on by several of the people at the conference, I have prepared a written version of the paper which was serialized in the Proceedings of the Royal Microscopy Society. It is about 25,000 words long, has more than 80 illustrations, and can be downloaded as a 6 MB Acrobat (pdf) file. In the presentation I include a few Quicktime movies, which are shown in the pdf file as single still frames. This is probably sufficient for the reader to understand the message, but if anyone wants the actual 600K of *.mov files they can also be downloaded (Figures 23, 27, 35 and 36).

Several brief tutorials showing some useful sequences of commands using Photoshop and Fovea Pro plug-ins can be also downloaded. These have several uses: 1) they produce useful results in many real circumstances; 2) the demonstrate the uses of the component functions and contribute to learning more about the available tools; and 3) they can be made into actions, which are an extremely powerful means for automating repetitive or complex operations.

• Superimpose colored outlines around features on the original grey scale or color image.
• Create a more effective rolling ball filter to remove dust and other small artefacts from an image.
• Generate a surface image with contour lines from a range image (e.g., from an AFM).
• Merge and align three images to form a color composite (may be useful for images acquired through different colored filters, or using different imaging modes in an AFM, or different accelerating voltages or detectors in an SEM, for example).

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