The Image Capture utility captures images from an image window and saves the result in one of a variety of formats. The different formats are handled by loadable modules (plugins); consult the File format topic for a list of the supported formats.
Because the images are captured from the screen, all of the following caveats apply:
Depending on the output format, the result is either a single file whose name is set by the "Output file" field or a sequence of files. In the latter case, the format of the file names are controlled by the "Name Format" menu and the Directory, Prefix, Extension, and Template fields.
Overview | Region processing | File format | Greyscale | Interleaving | Output file | Name format | Directory | Prefix | Extension | Template | Command Line
Use the "File format" menu in Image Capture's main dialog to select the output format. Supported file formats are:
To view and edit the options specific to the currently selected format, press the "options..." button next to the "File format" menu.
Image Capture determines the available formats by reading save_plugins.def in Priism's CONFIG directory and excluding all the formats which do not have an installed plugin.
When this toggle is on, Image Capture saves the captured images as greyscale (single component) images. Image Capture uses a weighted average of the red, green, and blue components at a pixel to determine the greyscale pixel value: nearest_integer(0.299 * red + 0.587 * green + 0.114 * blue).
When this toggle is off, Image Capture saves the three components (red, green, and blue) of the captured images.
Interleaving controls the order in which Image Capture records images. With the "zt" interleaving, Image Capture records all the selected z sections at a given time point before proceeding to the next time point. With the "tz" interleaving, Image Capture records all the selected time points for a given z section before proceeding to the next z section.
If the output is separate image files, the choice of interleaving only has an impact if you use a custom file template which includes the one dimensional output section index. If the output is a single file with multiple images, the order of the images in the file is the order in which the images were captured.
If the chosen file format stores multiple images in a single file, enter the desired name of the output file in the "Output file" field or press the "Output file" button to select the output file with a file browser.
If the chosen file format stores one image per file, use the "Name format" menu to set the template used by Image Capture to generate the file names. From the "Name format" menu you may select a standard template or choose the "custom template" option to use the template entered in the Template field. For the standard templates, the generated file names will all start with the contents of the Directory field, followed by a slash, and followed by the contents of the Prefix field. The remainder of the file name depends on which template was chosen: it will be the template name ("prefix_z#_t#extension", for instance) without the leading "prefix" and with "t#" replaced with a t followed by the output time index for the image in the file, "z#" replaced with a z followed by the output z index for the image in the file, and extension replaced by either the default extension for the file format or the contents of the Extension field. The number of digits used for an index is the number of digits needed to represent the largest index in that dimension. As an example, with the "prefix_z#_t#.extension" template, /var/tmp as the output directory, exp12_2002 as the output prefix, .tif as the extension, and an input region that has 500 time points and 30 z sections, the file name for the section whose output z and time indices are 1 and 2 respectively would be /var/tmp/exp12_2002_z01_t002.tif.
If the chosen file format stores one image per file and you have selected one of the standard file name formats, the files generated by Image Capture will all have names that start with the contents of the Directory field. The section on name formats has an example of this. For a custom file name template, the contents of the Directory field are substituted for any %d conversion codes.
If the chosen file format stores one image per file and you have selected one of the standard file name formats, the files generated by Image Capture will have names that include the contents of the Prefix field. The section on name formats has an example of this. For a custom file name template, the contents of the Prefix field are substituted for any %p conversion codes.
If the chosen file format stores one image per file and you have selected one of the standard file name formats, the files generated by Image Capture will have file names that end with the default extension for the chosen file format if the "default" toggle next to the Extension field is on or the contents of the extension field if the "default" toggle is off. The section on name formats has an example of this. For a custom file name template, the default file name extension (if the "default" toggle is on) or the contents of the Extension field (if the "default" toggle is off) are substituted for any %e conversion codes.
If the chosen file format stores one image per file, you can force Image Capture to use your own file name template by selecting "custom template" from the "Name format" menu and enter the template in the Template field. When Image Capture generates file names, it expands special conversion codes in the template. The conversion codes have the following general form: %[width][modifier]code.
Image Capture recognizes the following conversion codes:
width is optional and may be used with the z, t, and s codes to specify the minimum number of digits which are used to display the index value. width may be a positive integer indicating the minimum number of digits to use or the letter a to indicate that the minimum number of digits should be the number of digits in the maximum corresponding index. If an index would have less than the minimum number of digits, leading zeros are added to fill in the missing portion.
modifier is optional and may be used with the z, t, and s codes. If modifier is not present, the index generated by those codes is computed for the output file. If modifier is the letter i, then the index is computed relative to the input file.
As an example, the standard name format, "prefix_z#_t#extension", is equivalent to the custom template, %d/%p_z%az_t%at%e. The custom template, /var/tmp/%2iz_%2it.tif, would generate file names which included the input z and time indices of the image in the file. Each index would be displayed with at least two digits.
Image Capture accepts the command-line arguments described in Region.html. In addition, it has the following options (parts in brackets are optional):
-dir=dir
-extension=ext
-format=format_name[,format_option...]
-gray or -grey
-interleave=arrangement
-out=name or -out=name_format
-prefix=pref
-template=custom_template
The following example captures the contents of image window 1 and saves them as JPEG (with a quality parameter of 60) compressed images:
ImageCapture 1 -format=jfif,qual=60 -dir=/var/tmp -prefix=win1
The above example uses /var/tmp/win1_z##_t##.jpg as the file name pattern for the output files (the number of digits following _z and _t will depend on the number of z sections and time points in image window 1).