Diatom stacking, the use of transparency and colours

Wim van Egmond · Post by **Wim van Egmond** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 11:04 am

Like many of us using stacking software I have been thinking about ways how to avoid an image appearing too flat. Now Charlie showed this wonderful 3D image using Helicon I thought I might be interesting to post some of the ideas I worked on recently. They are somewhat related to the problem. I wanted to experiment a bit more before posting but was hardly home the last months. And probably the winter is a better season for this as well. But anyway, these are some experiments.

One solution is to run a full stack, a half stack and a quarter stack of images and put them in different layers in photoshop and make the full and half stack transparent. I am not fully satisfied but it could be an idea. Perhaps it will work better in darkfield.

What is perhaps more rewarding is to use colours (or when you have the atlantic on the right, colors) to emphasize the threedimensional shape. By using different colour filters for each series of focus layers you can separate them visually.

Of course this is nothing compared to an actual 3D image but it is something worth trying.

Wim

gpmatthews · Post by **gpmatthews** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 12:09 pm

Wim, that last image achieves a 3D effect really well. I think I can feel some experiments coming along...

Charles Krebs · Post by **Charles Krebs** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 12:28 pm

Wim,
I really like this effect, especially that third image. Very, very nice!

As Graham said:

I can feel some experiments coming along...

... so much to do, so little time....

BTW... congratulations on the 2008 Small World!

(and there are some answers to your questions about the 3D features in HF added to my earlier post).

Wim van Egmond · Post by **Wim van Egmond** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 12:49 pm

Thank you Graham! and congratulations to you too, Charlie! We were rather close.

I hope to be able to do more microscopy the future months. But it may take a while. I am over my ears in work. The last two years I did not have as much time for it as I would have liked. These diatoms were done just see if it worked and in a hurry.

Wim