Adriane here-
This post is the third and final in a series I’ve written about taking scanning electron microscope images of my fossil plankton (‘Plankton Photo Shoot‘) and how I process those images in photo editing software (‘Plankton Photo Shoot II: Creating the Perfect Image‘). Here, I will show you all the purpose of these images and the editing process, and how these are useful to other scientists in my field!
Now that all my SEM images are cleaned up (meaning, the background is removed, the edges of every images are cleaned up, and each file is saved as a high-quality PNG file), it’s time to create plates! I’m not talking about dinner plates that you would eat off of; rather, when we talk about plates in paleontology, we mean a page of high-quality fossil images that showcase the features of our fossils.
Plates are published in scientific journals as part of journal articles, and usually include a scale bar (so others know how large or small the fossil is), a number or letter beside each image on each plate, and a description underneath the plate with each image’s genus and species name. Plates can also contain other important features to help other scientists identify the specimens, such as arrows and labels pointing out specific parts of the fossil. For my dissertation, I had to create plates of my fossil plankton to show other scientists how I was identifying each species, and they will be used as a reference for others so they too can identify species. In total, I created 29 plates of fossil foraminifera for my dissertation!
The first thing I do when I create a new plate is to create the template. I create all my plates in Adobe Illustrator, and I always give my plates a black background. I also go ahead and add a bit of white space below the plate, and a text box within the white bit, so I can create the plate caption as I add images. Below is an image of the template, with the black background and white space for the caption.
Next, I add in numbers where the fossil images will go. I like to create plates that have 5 rows and 5 columns, so a total of 25 images. Putting in the numbers before the images helps me align everything on the template, and it makes creating the caption that will go under the plate much easier. For example, when I add the image next to 1, I then add in the fossil information right in the caption.
Now for the fun part: adding in the fossil images! All of my images are stored in separate file folders on my desktop, and each are labeled with the species name and the section from where it came within a drilled sediment cores. I just open the folder, grab the cropped image that I want, and plop in onto my template. I also plop in the original image file along with the cropped images. I do this because the original image has a scale bar, the information that tells people how large (or in my case, small) the fossil is.
Because the original image and cropped images are the same size, all I need to do is trace the scale bar with a white line, delete the original images, then place the scale bar underneath the cropped image.
Once I have the cropped image and scale bar on the template, I then re-scale them (or just make them smaller) to fit beside the appropriate number on the template. I then go ahead and add in the image’s genus and species, and location information below in the white space.
I do this 24 more times to create a full plate of foraminifera images!
This process is tedious, and it is very detail-oriented, but it was one of my favorite things to create during my dissertation! There’s nothing I love more than flipping through pages and pages of my printed plates containing foraminifera images to admire the diversity of shapes and sizes. The beauty of the foraminifera are on full display, and it’s sometimes still hard to believe that all the wonderful shells are created by single-celled protists!