Nassula

[Ecki]

This is Nassula. Nassula feeds mainly on cyanobacteria. Food vacuoles that contain cyanobacteria change their color with the digestion progress: green --> purple --> brown --> gold. Nassula has an oral basket (cyrtos, nasse). The cyrtos together with the colorful (purple!) food vacuoles helps to identify Nassula.



40x, DIC


40x, DIC

Image 1 shows the cyrtos from the outside of Nassula. Image 2 peeks inside. Right of the cyrtos is the nucleus, to the left there is the contractile vacuole.

More pictures of Nassula can be found here: http://www5.pbrc.hawaii.edu/allen/ch16/00-nas.html

Beautiful pictures of a cyrtos by Charles can be found here: http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... ad2c4c6c15

Regards,
Ecki

[Pau]

Ecki,
Excellent images of an incredible colorful protozoan, never would think that a digestion process would appear so beautiful.

[Charles Krebs]

Ecki,

These are great. The surface detail in the fist is wonderful. You can even see the contractile vacuole pore.

The exposure and color balance look perfect. The colors in this specimen are so amazing you might try a little "levels" adjustment to accentuate them even more.

[Ecki]

Pau and Charles,

thanks!

The colors in this specimen are so amazing

Some of the most common animalcules have trivial names in German. A stentor for example is called Trumpet Animalcules. These names come from very old times, from people who saw those animalcules first. It should be no surprise that the trivial name for Nassula ornata translates to Juwellery Animalcules.

Charles, when will you do a course in PS for me? I know there is much more that can be done with the raw files. It is just that I don't know what I am doing in this field and therefore I do close to nothing.

Regards
Eckhard

[Pau]

With a bit of PS it pops up (Altough I also like the smooth warm tones of the original image)

Over the posted image I did the following quick process:
- Match color: (neutralize marked)
luminance 122
intensity 105
transition 42
- levels:

- Unsharp mask: 34-1-2

Of course with the original raw file the PP would be more acurate, but if the image is already good, just a bit of correction works well.