On the face of it, this program is very complex and comprehensive. It is really designed for computer controlled microscopes, in which focus, objective lens, illumination, and more can be adjusted automatically. It also allows a wide range of annotation, measurement, and metadata to be added to each image. It further allows image sets to be bound together into reports. We don’t use any of that, mostly because we don’t have the automatic equipment or fancy camera, but also because learning all that software is too hard when we already know how to use other software to do the same measurements and annotations. As a result, the usable part of the software for us is relatively simple. Below is a step-by-step introduction that describes about everything we can normally do. Please let me know if you find errors or other problems.
Start by plugging the USB cable from the camera into one of the “SS” USB 3.X cable ports on the computer itself. Don’t use the USB port extension box. The port is both the camera power supply and the data connection.
Log into the computer as :
.\xrd
See KH about the password. This image shows the program icon. By default images are saved in the Leica camera images folder. Make your own subfolder in there and move your files to it when you’re done. There are also metadata files saved in the Metadata subfolder, but I don’t find those very useful.
Make sure the camera is set to “PC”, and then turn it on. The indicator light on the left side should change from orange to green when it links with the computer, sometimes with a beep. The camera resolution is 2592 x 1944.
On the BX41 microscope, make sure the slider plate on the right side of the microscope trinocular head is in the correct position. Other microscopes will be different.
Double-click on this icon to start the LAS-X program.
There will be a start announcement listing configurations. Don’t change anything. Click “OK” or just wait for the 10-second countdown to reach zero. Don’t worry about any additional announcements, but do press “OK” if you have to.
The LAS-X program opens on the small laptop screen. Drag it to the larger monitor and maximize the window. It’s easier to see and work on everything on the big monitor. You can also have the help screen and image file folders open on the lower screen.
If the big monitor is not turned on, press the red-circled button. If the screen still doesn’t light up, try unplugging and then plugging back in the HDMI cable shown with the red arrow.
The software is hyper-comprehensive and designed mostly for automatic microscopes, offering extensive annotation for experts in this specific software. I recommend NOT using most functions. You are better off annotating in Gimp, Photoshop, Inkscape, Illustrator, or another program you are more familiar with.
I recommend NOT touching any of the buttons with red Xs. Just use the ones with the yellow circles. The program is buggy and may crash. Just re-start it.
Assuming you have a thin section under the objective, press the yellow-circled Live image button to start live image mode. You focus with the usual coarse and fine focus knobs on the microscope.
Hover the cursor over the yellow-circled Explorer icon. A folder list will appear. A red highlight bar shows where the images will be saved. In general don’t change this. Make your own subfolders in the Leica camera images folder.
Look at the red-circled area at the bottom. In general, research images should be saved in a lossless format such as PNG. That format is generally more portable than TIF and has much smaller file sizes than GIF. If your images are for some other purpose, feel free to save your images in the lossy but smaller file size JPG format.
The camera only outputs 8-bit, 3-channel color data, so don’t bother trying to change the Bit depth.
Hover the cursor over the yellow-circled Image icon. The camera settings menu shows up. Only use the Standard settings, the Advanced settings don’t work for our camera.
In the Image window there are six buttons in a row, which are gray if inactive and in some color if active:
- Auto exposure: should be activated (color).
- Show histogram: should be activated (color).
- Show/hide preview: not of much use (leave gray).
- Show/hide color controls: should be inactivated if the image colors look OK, but activate to change the color balance (see below).
- Linked shading: should be activated (see below).
- Open camera preferences: don’t touch!
Linked shading
This should be activated. Click on the grayed button (#5). A window opens. Click the Activate check box, and close the window. The Linked shading button should turn green.
This setting helps correct for dimming toward the image corners, an annoying effect in some cases.
Keep Image Size at 5.0 MP (the maximum), and Live Format at 1.9 MP (the maximum). In general, keep the Gain at 1 and adjust Brightness for good image appearance.
Use the gamma control (not labeled but it’s the right-hand slider here) to make the image look as good as possible.
In general, you want at least one histogram curve to to have a positive value at 0 on the horizontal scale, and one to have a positive value at 255. If they don’t, adjust the end black/white point sliders on the lower control. You don’t want too much overexposed white, but you also want blacks to be black.
The Brightness, Gain, gamma, and black/white points all affect image appearance in different ways. Adjust those and focus to make the image on-screen as good as you can make it.
To help with the previous Brightness and other exposure controls, you can press the Over-/Underexposure button. It shows “underexposed” things like opaques as blue, and “overexposed” things like too-bright colorless quartz and plagioclase as red. What this means in terms of what the actual image looks like you will have to judge for yourself. This mode turns off by pressing the button again.
In the Over-/Underexposure mode, you can open the Image menu and fiddle with Brightness, Gain, gamma, and black/white zero points, and see the effects in the blue and red areas. Again, switch back to the normal view by pushing the Over-/Underexposure button.
One of the big issues in microphotography is color balance. You want whites to be white, so hopefully colored things will also be the right color. Press the Color controls button (#4) to open the Color Controls.
You can push the White balance button to automatically set the white balance. I generally think this makes the image too blue. You can reset it with the Reset button. You can also adjust R, G, and B channels separately using the sliders or the color wheel.
You can also adjust color saturation using the Saturation slider. In general 30 to 40 is a good saturation value. Setting it to zero (no saturation enhancement) tends to give dull-looking colors, I think.
Once the image is in focus and the lighting and color is as good as you can get it, press the Acquire image button to produce and automatically save the image. It takes a few seconds.
The result image will be displayed when it’s done, and will turn off Live Image mode.
Press the Live Image button to turn Live Image back on.
