Controls in this area allow the user to smooth the data in a variety of ways.
  • De-Zing This button, if clicked, will remove "zingers" from the image. These are pixels that have substantially (and astatistically) more intensity than all of their neighbors. (Specifically, pixels that deviate by more than five standard deviations from all four of their nearest neighbors). This can be a problem particularly with some CCD detectors. The pixel is replaced with the average of the surrounding nearest-neighbor pixels. Note that this process is irreversible, although the original data file is untouched. If you are unhappy with the results, you will have to read in the data again. Note also that the algorithm may falsely identify pixels as "zingers" if you have very sharp Bragg peaks, with widths on the order of several pixels. The dezing-ing process can take several seconds; a progress bar lets you know how far you have gotten.
  • Smooth This button, if clicked, will locally smooth the image, by replacing each pixel with an average including that pixel and the surrounding pixels. This may help in identifying interesting features in a noisy image. It should not ordinarily have a big effect on line plots, but the process does actually throw away some information, so you should probably not do it before making publication-quality plots. Note that this process is irreversible, although the original data file is untouched. If you are unhappy with the results, you will have to read in the data again. For most applications the Condense option may in many cases be closer to what you want. The smoothing process can take several seconds; a progress bar lets you know how far you have gotten.
  • Condense This button, if clicked, condenses the image by summing together multiple pixels. The drop-down menu above it specifies how many pixels are to be combined--for example, if 3x3 is selected then each region of 3x3=9 pixels is summed into one pixel, resulting in a dataset that is 1/9 the size of the original with each pixel containing on the order of 9 times the original value. Like the Smooth option, this may help in identifying interesting features in a noisy image. However, it does a better job than Smooth on low statistics data, since the data are summed rather than averaged so that no counts are thrown away. It also has the effect of speeding up subsequent calculations, since the size of the dataset over which calculations are done is substantially reduced. The net effect is as if you had a detector with lower spatial resolution (larger pixels). If you are unhappy with the results, you will have to read in the data again. The condensing process can take several seconds; a progress bar lets you know how far you have gotten.