V1.62 Release Notes
-------------------

1) A bug was fixed that caused the title bar to switch to color when saving a stack in PICS format and the monitor was not set to 256 colors.

2) A bug was fixed that could cause some plug-ins to fail on Power Macs.

3) The maximum number of slices per stack was increased to 5000 (PPC only).

4) The AverageSlices macro routine now accepts two optional arguments that specify the starting slice and number of slices to be averaged. Two new macros in the "Movie Making" macro file ('Average of Stack' and 'Running Average of Stack') use this new capability.

5) The AutoOutline macro routine no longer beeps when it is unable to create an ROI.

6) The maximum number of image windows was increased from 250 to 1000.

7) The maximum number of text windows was increased from 10 to 20.

8) Scion frame grabbers should now work correctly on G3 Macs.

9) Capturing works with more QuickTime digitizers. It is no longer necessary to turn of virtual memory on the 7500/7600 to capture using the built-in digitizer. The built-in G3 digitizer works for single frame capture if the monitor is set to 256 colors. 

10) A bug was fixed that sometimes caused the calculated centers of lines and rectangles to be offset by a half pixel.

11) Fixed a missing "System" LUT problem on blue and white G3 Macs by adding the a clut id=8 resource to the NIH Image application. (b34)




V1.61 Release Notes (20 Dec 96)
-------------------------------

1) 24-bit color TIFF files in planar format can now be opened.

2) Bugs were fixed that caused Saving/Exporting of LUTs, 8-bit to RGB
conversions, display of RGB values in Info, and macro LUT updating to fail
if the monitor was not set to 256 colors.

3) New images less than 16 pixels in height can now be created.

4) Balloon help in the Preferences dialog box was fixed.

5) The PutPixel macro routine is now about five times faster.

6) Bugs were fixed that could cause NIH Image to crash when opening PICS
files.

7) NIH image now opens and saves QuickTime movies thanks to source code
contributed by Eric Shelden (shelden@umich.edu). The Open command will
place images from a QuickTime movie into a new stack. Note, however, that
the current LUT is always used. Therefore, before opening the movie, you
must switch to the Grayscale LUT when opening a grayscale movie and to the
System LUT when opening a color movie. Stacks can be saved in QuickTime
format using the Save As command and selecting the radio button labeled
"QuickTime". A dialog box allows you to select the compression scheme and
image quality level. 

8) The Get('parameter') macro function was extended to return the
following parameters:

    Get('Offset') - returns the current frame grabber offset
    Get('Gain') - returns the current frame grabber gain
    Get('ScreenWidth') - returns the screen width in pixels
    Get('ScreenHeight') - returns the screen height in pixels

9) The 'exit' macro command now accepts an optional string argument and
passes it automatically to 'PutMessage'. The frequent sequence

   if error then begin
       beep;
       PutMessage('reason ...');
       exit;
     end;

can now be shortened to

   if error then
      exit('reason ...');

10) The DICOM file import routine was improved.

11) Commands were added to the Binary submenu for generating Euclidian
distance maps, ultimate eroded points, and for doing watershed
segmentation.

The "Distance Map" command replaces each foreground (black) pixel in a
binary image with a gray value equal to that pixel's distance from the
nearest background (white) pixel. To reduce rounding errors, intermediate
EDM values are stored as 16-bit values. Macros can generate EDMs using the
"binary('edm')" macro command. 

The "Ultimate Points" command generates the ultimate eroded points (UEPs)
of the EDM. It requires a binary image as input. The UEPs represent the
centers of particles that would be separated by segmentation. The UEP's
gray value is equal to the radius of the inscribed circle of the
corresponding particle. Note that the EDM is automatically smoothed when
doing watershed segmentation but not when generating UEPs. You can force
EDM smoothing, however, by holding down the option key while selecting the
"Ultimate Points" command, or be putting "SetOption;" in front of the
binary('ultimate points') macro command. Smoothing the EDM results in
fewer noise induced errors but causes the gray values of the UEPs to be
slightly lower, i.e. it slightly reduces the estimated particle sizes.
This command requires free ram equal to 2-5 times the image size. Use the
"binary('ultimate points')" command to generate UEPs in a macro.

The "Watershed" command separates touching convex particles. It requires
free ram equal to 2-5 times the image size. Hold down the option key to
disable EDM smoothing. Watershed segmentation is available from macros
using the "binary('watershed')" macro command. 

12) Support was added for the PCI version of the Scion AG-5.




V1.60 Release Notes (20 March 1996)
-----------------------------------

1) The QuickTime video digitizer settings can now be saved using Record 
Preferences.

2) DICOM and ACR/NEMA files with headers larger than 4096 bytes can now 
be imported.

3) A bug was fixed that sometimes caused 'Analyze Particles' to fail if 
the monitor was not in 256 color mode.

4) A bug was fixed that caused the wand tool to fail when clicking inside 
an object touching the right edge of the image.

5) If the mouse is over an active frequency domain (FFT) window, its 
location is now displayed in polar coordinates.  The angle is expressed 
in degrees (!), while the radius is expressed in either pixels per cycle 
(p/c) or, if a spatial scale calibration has been made using Set Scale, 
in [units] per cycle (e.g. mm/c).

6) Capturing of images from QuickTime compatible digitizers now works 
correctly when the grayscale map has been modified or when the number of 
reserved LUT entries is non-zero.

7) A bug was fixed that caused the 'Time Stamp' option of the 'Make 
Movie' command' to fail when the monitor was not set to 256 colors.

8) Support was added for the PCI versions of the Scion LG-3 and VG-5 
frame grabber cards. Both cards can capture 30 full size frames per 
second to system RAM.

9) A checkbox for selecting "S-Video" input was added to the QuickTime 
video digitizer version of the Video Control dialog box.

10) Support for user-defined functions was added to the macro language.

11) A function ('GetPath') was added to the macro language for fetching 
various file paths. It has three variations:

    1) GetPath('window') - returns the folder path (e.g. 'HD500:Images:')
    of the current current image or text window. Returns an empty string if
    no window is open or the current window has no file associated it.

    2) GetPath('startup') - returns the path of the folder from which
    NIH Image was started.

    3) GetPath('pref') - returns the path of the Preferences folder in
    the System Folder.

The 'File Paths Demo' macro in 'Input/Output Macros' demonstrates how to use
these functions.

12) A command was added to the macro language for getting information 
about files. It has the form:

    GetFileInfo(FullPath, FileType, FileSize)

where 'FullPath' is a string containing a path name (e.g. 
'HD500:Images:image01'). GetFileInfo returns the file type ('TIFF', 
'PICT', 'TEXT' etc) in the string variable 'FileType' and the file size 
in bytes in the integer variable 'FileSize'. If the file isn't found, 
'FileType' is set to an empty string and 'FileSize' is set to -1. See the 
'File Paths Demo' macro in 'Input/Output Macros' for an example of how to 
use GetFileInfo.

13) A macro command was added for selecting tools from the tool palette 
It has the form "SelecTool(tool)", where tool is one of: 'magnifier', 
'grabber', 'pencil', 'eraser', 'brush', 'drawline', 'paintbucket', 
'profile', 'wand', 'angletool', 'rectangle', 'oval', 'polygon', 
'freehand', 'straightline', 'freeline', 'segmentline', 'lut', 'text', 
'spraycan', 'picker' or 'crosshair'.

14) A "Desktop Friendly" option was added to Preferences that eliminates 
annoying desktop color changes when the monitor is set to 256 colors but 
reduces the number of colors available for displaying images.

15) The PPC version of NIH Image now runs up to 12% faster due to better 
code optimization in the Metrowerks Codewarrior 8 PPC compiler.

16) A bug was fixed that caused the Make Montage command to draw a border 
around the entire composite image when the "Borders" option was not 
checked. This was a problem when creating movie strips for use with the 
Rotator (http://rsb.info.nih.gov/nih-image/Java/Rotator/) Java applet.

