Image SXM for Mac

User Reviews

• industry standard for stm images on mac os x

  fraedrillAugust 19, 2008

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />Excellent program, the main reason I have moved to Mac OS X for my general work. More intuitive, faster and more stable than Gwyddion and WSxM on the PC and fully featured (once you learn how to use it). Very lightweight as well, which contributes to its speed (which is blinding, even on an Intel Mac (not Universal yet)). The best image browser I've seen on any SXM program, though the browser itself is not heuristic and the file importer for unsupported file formats is clumsy. If you're using a supported format though (and most formats are supported), this is a distinct advantage as there are less options to fill out before you can see your images. The background compensation is the best I've seen since the obvious menu options can be combined with the select area tools to totally customise the background correction. The 3D image generator is voxel based, I think, which means it isn't as smooth looking as the rubber sheet method employed in WSxM, but it is perfectly adequate. The filters and FFT analysis options make extracting order from chaotic STM images as easy as you'd like, and the extensive macro capability adds incredible flexibility to the basic functionality. The only gripe is that charts cannot be exported as PS files, so it's quite hard to get them to look good enough for publication, but they can be exported as CSV files so it's certainly not impossible.

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