calculate colors or pixel of a photo?

[Andre1980]

Hi,

I'm a cell biologist who takes a lot of photos of fluorescently labeled cells.
I'm looking for a way to get numbers out my photos in order to draw graphs and get a better understanding of the amount of cells that are labeled or the intensity of the labels per photo.
To show you a real life example I attached two pictures, the almost black one is the negative control against which I have to compare my sample (the one with the green spots around a number of cells).
This difference of light in numbers is what I'm looking for.

I think there might be a software or any other workaround to do that, which probably is a common application for graphic designers.
That's why I post this question in this topic.

The application doen's have to be comfortable or big or serve just that purpose. I could imagine just drawing a frame across a photo and then have counter teling me there are this-and-that many green pixels, and black pixels.
I could also change the color to black and white if that would help with the measuring.
Only must have is that the app accepts a jpg or tiff file format and should be free to use.

ANY idea of how to do this is appreciated.

Many thanks!!!

Andre

 

[Andre1980]

here are the photos

 

[PixelFactory]

I think this is what you are looking for.

http://homepage.mac.com/colocalizerpro/

It's a pretty niche function and I don't know if you will find a free program to do it.

 

[Kwill]

Prior ^post^ looks like a good prospect. Alternative solutions for forensic and scientific evaluation of digital images are available from Reindeer Graphics.

 

[snickelfritz]

There was a seminar at Adobe MAX regarding some hitherto unknown, and quite powerful, pixel reading capabilities in Flash Player.
IIRC, it was based on filter and blending modes that allow the application to extrapolate data from a live video feed.
http://tv.adobe.com/#vi+f15384v1012
An online application called "Peacock" was involved.
http://aviary.com/tools/peacock

Might be helpful to develop a custom AIR application if your process frequently requires that text/numeric data be generated from complex pixel data.

 

[ChrisA]

Hi,

...... I'm looking for a way to get numbers out my photos in order to draw graphs and get a better understanding of the amount of cells that are labeled or the intensity of the labels per photo.....

You might talk to some astronomers. People who work with optical imaging have much the same problem as you. THere are a few "standard" software systems out there used for quanitative analisis of images. It's seems that every scientific field has it's own set of image analysis software.

If yo are looking for something more general purpose that can be used for this look at the new Adobe Photoshop "extended". I think it will do about what you need.

Take a look:
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshopextended/science/

 

[Andre1980]

Thanks a lot for your help!
Man, this forum rocks!

I even came up with a new geek joke:
"What do a cell biologist and an astronomer have in common? They use the same software."

But seriously, it kinda makes sense.. I'll go and scan the net for that kind of applications as well.

 

[Kwill]

If yo are looking for something more general purpose that can be used for this look at the new Adobe Photoshop "extended". I think it will do about what you need.

I have Photoshop CS3 Extended and the count tool is a manual click-and-count procedure -- helpful perhaps for not losing track on occasional projects.

 

[lucidmedia]

There was a seminar at Adobe MAX regarding some hitherto unknown, and quite powerful, pixel reading capabilities in Flash Player.
IIRC, it was based on filter and blending modes that allow the application to extrapolate data from a live video feed.
http://tv.adobe.com/#vi+f15384v1012
An online application called "Peacock" was involved.
http://aviary.com/tools/peacock

Might be helpful to develop a custom AIR application if your process frequently requires that text/numeric data be generated from complex pixel data.

Probably not what the OP was looking for, but snickelfritz is correct. What the OP is trying to do is supported by built-in functions of flash's bitmap data class - no external software necessary. It would not be difficult to get a actionscript developer to create either an AIR app or an online app where you could upload images and pull data from them.

These features are far from "unknown", but in the context of the MAX presentation (real-time video analysis), they are often unused. This type of analysis is commonly used for things like finger-tracking for FTIR (frustrated total internal reflection) multi-touch tables and real-time image tracking. Applications written in a native programming language simply have better performance.