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Making Slides and Pictures

There are many ways to create molecular graphics images for publication and projection. Below is a set of procedures to get you started.

Mark Harris has a tutorial on image manipulation available.

Checkout the Biomedical Communications web page. They have a lot of general information on computer-generated slides and will accept floppy disks for making slides.

If you would like a classy background to work with here is a sampling.

If you are making a seminar presentation try Microsoft Powerpoint on the Mac or PC. To import your molecular graphics images (usually SGI RGB format) open the image in GIMP, go to "Image -> Index" in the pull-down menu, and generate a 256 color palette; then save the image as a GIF format. This GIF can be FTP'ed directly to the Mac or PC and imported into Powerpoint.


Steps for making slides and pictures using CSB applications:

  1. Save individual images with either white or black background.
  2. Assemble your picture from the saved images.
  3. Label your picture
  4. Make hardcopy (slide, paper, transparency) of your picture.


Step 1 - Save individual images with either white or black background.


A. Set color of application background.

GRASP, O, MidasPlus, Ribbons have black as the default color

GRASP:

O:

MidasPlus:

set bg_color white

Ribbons:


B. Smooth Image with Antialiasing

Grasp:

You can save this image from within GRASP or snapshot (import on DEC's) it as described below. To save it:

O:

MidasPlus:

echo 'antialias 2x2' > conic.cf

-c conic.cf

(This can be slow, so get your image correct before using this option).

Ribbons:

(Here you must save the smoothed image, it won't display interactively).

Your smoothed image is now in filename.rgb


C. Save image using snapshot or import

In an IRIX UNIX window type:

snapshot &

In a DEC Alpha UNIX window type:

setup imagemagick

import filename.[ext] (Where "ext" is the format of the saved image, e.g. gif, sgi, tiff)



Step 2. Assemble your picture from the saved images


A. Set the display color

xsetroot -solid black

xsetroot -solid white


B. Assemble the image

For each of the images that you will combine in your picture do the following:

ipaste -n fileneme.rgb &



Step 3. Label your picture


The preferred method is to use GIMP. The description of ilabel below is valid but inferior.

Ilabel allows you to create labels on a .rgb image. You can then save the labeled picture or save the labels in a separate file for later viewing and editing with the .rgb picture.

ilabel -o filename.lbl filename.rgb

where filename.lbl will be the file containing labels and filename.rgb is your picture file.

ilabel -i filename.lbl filename.rgb



Steip 4. Make hardcopy (slide, paper, transparency) of your picture.


Printing hard copies of your images


Making 35 mm slides on the Focus Slidemaker (Imagecorder)

NOTE: Make sure your image files have world read access!

Two Imagecorders are installed, one is attached to csbile and the other to csblys.

      printpanel &

Polaroid Color Film Recorder

Attached to GLAZIER is a Polaroid ProPalette 7000 Film Recorder. Instuctions for using the film recorder are found at the links below.

Please follow these instructions as written. Modifiying parameters on the film recorder software can cause problems. The only items that you need to modify are stated in these instructions. If you do modify other parameters, make sure you change them back before exiting.


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Last Modified: Monday, 12-Aug-2002 09:30:21 EDT by P. Fleming