Many programs allow arbitrary mixing of channels to improve contrast. A combination of about 65 percent green, 25 percent red, 10 percent blue produces a monochromatic image whose brightness corresponds to the human visual impression of brightness, rather than a simple averaging of the red, green and blue. However, in many cases arbitrary combinations, including negative amounts of one or two channels, may be useful to highlight specific structures. This interactive tutorial illustrates this technique.

The tutorial initializes with a randomly selected specimen imaged in the microscope appearing in the left-hand window entitled Specimen Image. Three Channel % sliders can be adjusted to control the relative amounts of red, green, and blue that are combined to produce the Grayscale Image. An optional feature automatically adjusts the values to total 100 percent when the Autoscaling checkbox is highlighted. The Choose A Specimen pull-down menu provides a broad selection of colorful specimen images, in addition to the initial randomly chosen one.

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