3. Acquisition

Acquisition Before considering Acquisition we need to ask ourselves some questions What equipment are we using? Do we have a camera with a Image-Pro supported driver? Do we wish to use a TWAIN device? What do we wish to achieve? Do we want to capture 1 image or many? Do we want to capture colour or monochrome? What bit depth do we want our image to have?

Supported Drivers If we have a camera which is supported by Image-Pro we can access the driver either by using the acquire file menu or the camera icon short cut. Each driver dialog box is slightly different to accommodate differing camera functionality. Each will contain a tab for Set up, Image, Preview, Acquire and Macro. All will also contain Start Preview, Snap, Minimal Dialog and Close buttons

Capture Most acquisition dialog boxes will have a minimal dialog box to give a simpler interface. A good example if this comes with the CoolSnap driver Preview - Opens the a Preview image Snap- Acquires the image in the mode selected earlier New image etc. Setup- Returns us to the Main Acquisition Window Auto-Exposure Options- Opens auto exposure options The Preview and acquire options slider bar allows us to increase or decrease the level of light coming to the camera. When the light level is correct and your preview image looks good, start acquiring Images.

Single or Multiple Image capture Single Image Capture New Image This produces a new image in the workspace preview each time we press Snap. This allows us to gather images and save them at a later date. Active Image This will continually update our last snapped image. So previously acquired images are not saved.

Setting up Multiple image capture First we have to tick the check box – Enable Multiple Image capture Next enter how many images we want to acquire. Now we have 2 options: to use the minimum possible interval between acquiring the images or to perform time-lapse capture. To use the minimum possible interval make sure the box is checked and Set Time is grayed out. If you wish to perform time-lapse, click on Set Time making sure that “use minimum possible interval” is unchecked. Here we can enter the time we require between acquisition. Sequence-This will generate a sequence file to RAM which is very much like an AVI sequence but with no compression. We can play and edit these sequences. To File -This will generate a series of Tiff files to a specified file.

Sequences When we acquire a sequence our resultant image now has an associated toolbar. If we have acquired to file we need to merge the files together to generate our tool bar These tool bars are generated whenever we acquire a sequence. We can view the sequences either by playing them into the workspace preview or by looking at each image within the sequence gallery.

Further Notes Some drivers may offer us further options Such as Capture colour or monochrome images Control bit depth of captured images Control resolution of previewed and captured images

TWAIN TWAIN - Twain is a method of opening external capture software within Image-Pro. TWAIN allows us to Set up the camera for acquisition within Image-pro Acquire images which will be directly inserted to the Workspace Preview Operate with cameras and scanners which are not supported by Image- Pro Plus.

Multiplane Focus When we are looking at objects which have depth to them we often get problems with depth of field. This will mean any image we capture will always only have certain parts of the subject out of focus. We can however acquire several images through depth and generate a composite image where all items are in focus. To do this we use the tool called Extended Depth of Field found in the Process File Menu

Multiplane Focus