.. _ima-menu-view:

View options for Images
=======================

.. figure:: /images/shots/i_view.png

    Screenshot of the "View" menu.

When the "Image Panel" is selected, the menus and toolbars are updated to
provide image-related actions.

The "View" menu allows you to visualize the current image or group of images.
It also allows you to show/hide titles, to show/hide the contrast panel, to
refresh the visualization, and so on.

View in a new window
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Open a new window to visualize the selected images.

This option allows you to show the selected images in a separate window,
in which you can visualize the data more comfortably (e.g., by maximizing the
window) as well as to add or edit annotations.

When you click on the button "Annotations" in the toolbar of the new window,
the annotation editing mode is activated (see the section "Edit annotations" below).

Edit annotations
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Open a new window to edit annotations.

This option allows you to edit the annotations of the selected images in a
separate window. This is equivalent to select the "View in a new window" option
and then click on the "Annotations" button in the toolbar of the new window.

Annotations are used to add text, lines, rectangles, ellipses, and other
geometrical shapes to the images. They are useful to highlight regions of
interest, to add comments, to mark points, and so on.

.. note::
    The annotations are saved in the metadata of the image, so they are
    persistent and will be displayed every time you visualize the image.

.. figure:: /images/annotations/image_annotations1.png

    Annotations may be added in the separate view.

The typical workflow to edit annotations is as follows:

1. Select the "Edit annotations" option.
2. In the new window, add annotations by clicking on the corresponding buttons
   at the bottom of the window.
3. Eventually, customize the annotations by changing their properties (e.g.,
   the text, the color, the position, etc.) using the "Parameters" option in the
   context menu of the annotations.
4. When you are done, click on the "OK" button to save the annotations. This will
   close the window and the annotations will be saved in the metadata of the image
   and will be displayed in the main window.

.. figure:: /images/annotations/image_annotations2.png

    Annotations are now part of the image metadata.

.. note::
    Annotations may be copied from an image to another by using the
    "copy/paste metadata" features.

Auto-refresh
^^^^^^^^^^^^

Automatically refresh the visualization when the data changes:

- When enabled (default), the plot view is automatically refreshed when the
  data changes.

- When disabled, the plot view is not refreshed until you manually refresh it
  by using the "Refresh manually" menu entry.

Even though the refresh algorithm is optimized, it may still take some time to
refresh the plot view when the data changes, especially when the data set is
large. Therefore, you may want to disable the auto-refresh feature when you are
working with large data sets, and enable it again when you are done. This will
avoid unnecessary refreshes.

Refresh manually
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Refresh the visualization manually.

This triggers a refresh of the plot view. It is useful when the auto-refresh
feature is disabled, or when you want to force a refresh of the plot view.

Show contrast panel
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Show/hide contrast adjustment panel.

Show graphical object titles
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Show/hide titles of analysis results or annotations.

This option allows you to show or hide the titles of the graphical objects
(e.g., the titles of the analysis results or annotations). Hiding the titles
can be useful when you want to visualize the data without any distractions,
or if there are too many titles and they are overlapping.