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As Matthias has noted you can simply copy-paste CellQuest elements into
PICT accepting programs (this can be very tedious if you have limited
memory and 'hungry' programs like Canvas). However this does not get around
the inherent problem of poor image quality from CellQuest. If you compare a
histogram from CellQuest with a histogram from, say, WinMDI, you will know
what I mean. Looking through J.Ex Med recently it was painfully obvious
which papers had used CellQuest to generate their figures.
We have been trying to find away around this problem for a while and the
'best' solution we have come with so far is as follows:-
- Construct your histogram/dotplot etc in CellQuest several times
bigger than you intend your final figure to be
- Copy and paste to a drawing program (I have only tried Canvas
3.5). In Canvas you then need to convert the entire pasted group to a
bit-mapped object
- Cut out only the parts inside the frame and delete the rest
before pasting back (ie get rid of the border and labels)
- Scale your very large plot down to a size to fit into an
appropriately sized plot frame with labels that you have previously
contructed within Canvas. The down-scaling increases the image quality you
get (ie the lines in histograms are much smoother)
- If you wish you can then increase the resolution of internal
bit-mapped part (you need to experiment here - high resolution gives nicer
lines but they can become too fine, especially if you want to make slides
or overheads)...
After setting it up initially you can save templates in Canvas and Cell
Quest that you use again. I would only recommend trying this on machines
with a decent amount of RAM (I tried to do it on a 7600 with only 16MB and
nearly drove myself crazy waiting for virtual memory).
Obviously this is an extremely tedious procedure but it does produce much
better histograms than a simple cut and paste. It is far from perfect and
we would welcome any suggestions!! We have almost come to the point where
we are considering using another program (eg WinMDI) to produce publication
quality images...
Hope this helps.
Adrian
******************************************************
Adrian Smith (PhD Student)
T CELL BIOLOGY GROUP
Centenary Institute of Cancer Medicine & Cell Biology
Locked Bag No.6 Newtown, NSW 2042 AUSTRALIA.
Ph: 61-2-9565-6197 Fax: 61-2-9565-6105
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CD-ROM Vol 3 was produced by Monica M. Shively and other staff at the
Purdue University Cytometry Laboratories and distributed free of charge
as an educational service to the cytometry community.
If you have any comments please direct them to
Dr. J. Paul Robinson, Professor & Director,
PUCL, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907.
Phone: (765)-494-0757;
FAX(765) 494-0517;
Web