This freely available Java-based program is designed for viewing and processing images. It can be accessed online as an applet or downloaded as a standalone application, compatible with Java 1.6 or later virtual machines. With its advanced image analytics and basic editing capabilities, this software offers a comprehensive solution for image-related tasks.
ImageJ is an all-in-one image processing tool, able to view, edit, convert and analyze a wide range of graphic formats. The utility is quite lightweight considering the impressive number of capabilities; this however comes at the cost of the graphic interface as ImageJ does not have the layout that most editors employ and is targeted at power users.
With this application you will be able to automate editing tasks by recording commands and then using macros to implement them. Support for plug-ins adds that extra extensibility, which users look for (there are currently over 500 plug-ins available that cover filters, acquisition, segmentation and many more categories).
The utility works with multiple types of image extensions like GIF (animated), TIFF, PNG, BMP, JPEG, RAW as well as video formats (AVI).
In terms of graphic processing and analysis, ImageJ stands as a very solid tool; you can add image effects, detect particles, summarize, view the histogram. One important feature is the ability to perform the same action (measure, convert) on multiple images at the same time.
ImageJ may not be the easiest tool to work with for novice users (functions are not very intuitively dispersed along the interface and the toolbar is not the best way to access them), but this is definitely the application of choice for advanced ones; you can thoroughly analyze just about any image format, draw, convert between different extensions, capture the screen and so much more.
v1.4 [May 13, 2011]
Thanks to Thomas Boudier, added five new 3D filters (Median, Mean, Minimum, Maximum and Variance) to the Process>Filters submenu.
Added the "Restore Startup Tools" command to the toolbar's >> menu.
Thanks to Tiago Ferreira, built-in and plugin tools can be added to toolsets and the startup macros (example).
Michael Schmid modified the Overlay Brush tool for constrained motion (vertical or horizontal) with shift and resizing with ctrl-shift (cmd-shift on Macs).
Thomas Tongue added support for the CDELT and CTYPE headers to the FITS Reader.
Added the getinfo("selection.color") and getValue("selection.width") macro functions.
Thanks to Simon Roussel, fixed a bug that could cause overlays to not be displayed on virtual stacks.
Fixed a bug that caused the brush and pencil tools to activate overlay selections.
Michael Schmid fixed a bug that sometimes caused Preview to not work correctly with commands in the Process>Filters submenu.
Fixed a 1.46 regression that caused the ROI Manager to generate incorrect ROI labels when the Associate 'Show All" ROIs with Slices" option was not enabled.
Thanks to Stephan Semmler, fixed a regression that caused the ImagePlus.getNDimensions() method to sometimes return the wrong value.
Thanks to Glen MacDonald, fixed a 1.46 regression that caused the setOption("Show All",boolean) macro function to not work.
