BioRad Confocal Users:

I have new versions of the plug-ins for the reading and writing of BioRad
PIC files in Adobe Photoshop for Windows.  The following major bugs are
corrected in version 2.1:

- Non-square images saved incorrectly (Opps!).

- The first time a plug-in was run, the first image was always read from a
multiple-image BioRad PIC file regardless of the actual value chosen.

- Dialog boxes not positioned properly in some cases.

- Depending on whether you have installed other programs written with
Microsoft Visual C++, you may also need the run-time library files
(Msvcrt.dll and Msvcirt.dll) to run these plug-ins.  These files are now
included.

In addition, I have included the following plug-ins and programs that you
may find useful.

- An import plug-in for the merging of up to three images from files in the
BioRad PIC format into a RGB image.  This is much easier than manually
having to open the grayscale images and then using the Apply command to
merge the images.

- A filter plug-in for the "mixing" of the color channels in RGB images.
This filter allows the color of the merged images to be changed (for
example, from red\green\blue to red\green\white).  And more importanly, to
improve the appearance of color images so they look better when printed.
The basic idea is to switch the color combination from red\green\blue to
light red\light green\light "baby" blue instead of the pure primary colors.
 This combination looks much brighter on a black background than the pure
primary colors.  Example images of the widely published 3-color pancreatic
islet are included to help explain this concept.

- A program to convert BioRad lookup table (LUT) files to Photoshop Color
Table (ACT) files.  This allows the pseudo-color of grayscale images in
Photoshop to match those in the BioRad confocal microscope operating software.

- Import plug-ins for the automatic reading or merging of multiple images
from BioRad PIC files.

I will automatically send these new plug-ins to the individuals who have
already e-mailed a request to me.

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If you have comments or reports of problems with these plug-ins, please
contact me at the same e-mail address.

Todd Clark Brelje
Minnesota, USA