I've been using Adobe Illustrator and ImageJ but adding scale bars individually to images is quite a tedious job especially if you have a lot of images. I would like to add a standard scale bar to all images at a particular magnification. How are other researchers here managing?
The easiest way if you are using Adobe Illustrator is to record your actions i.e. importing and placing your scale bars. See http://help.adobe.com/en_US/illustrator/cs/using/WS714a382cdf7d304e7e07d0100196cbc5f-62b3a.html. Only difficulty is that would need to have them in same place each time. The same can be done in Adobe PhotoShop as well. It is then possible to link the actions required to a batch process so can load up your batch of images and set magnification and get scale bars added. Might need a little work to get set up in first place but will save time in the long run.
I use imageJ:
Load images as stack (Import -> Image sequence, then got to
Analyze -> Set Scale to select the given scale, the got to
Analyze -> Tools --> Scale Bar and select "Label all slices"
yes you can use Image J for label all slices or the final image (with any image editor)
you can use matlab. lets say that you have the scale you want to superimpose as a binary image Scale and then you can the actual image img (asumming is grayscale)
img=imread(imgfile);
Scale=imread(scalefile);
Imgscale=img.*(~Scale)+Scale;
imwrite(imgscale,scaleimgfile);
Apart from ImageJ you can also use Fiji (Fiji is just imagej), a distribution of ImageJ with lots of plugins already loaded among whom you can find the ones used introduce scales. Also, it has the ability to check automatically for new program and plugin versions.
Image J seems to be working the best for me. See below a step-by-step protocol to add scale bars to multiple images at the same time (you can only do one set of magnifications at one time) :
1. Set scale to your desired magnification (don't forget to check "global").
2. Open images and convert them to a stack ( Image --> Stacks--> Images to stacks).
3. Analyse --> tools-->scale bar--> label all slices
4. File --> save as---> image sequence --> check "use slice labels as file names" if you want to save your files with the same names.
Hope that helps :)
A comment on the ImageJ solution described by Nupur Kohli and
Max-Joseph Kraus: After applying the scale bar, go to Image -> Overlay and select -> Flatten, because if you don´t, the scale bar will not be visible in the exported image.
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