The Art of Scientific Imaging: Preparing Fungal Plates for Publication
Behind the scenes of my digital imaging workflow: capturing high-resolution micrographs, calibrating scale bars, and assembling clean taxonomic plates in Adobe Photoshop.
From the Microscope Lens to Adobe Photoshop
In fungal taxonomy, a high-quality taxonomic plate is just as important as the molecular tree. Reviewers and readers rely on visual evidence to verify diagnostic features like conidiophore branching, phialide shape, and subtle colony pigmentation. Over the past few years, refining my digital photo editing workflow in Adobe Photoshop has become one of my favorite parts of the research process.
Creating a clean taxonomic composite plate starts at the microscope. Capturing hyaline (transparent) structures or heavily melanized spores (like those of Hortaea werneckii) requires careful light adjustment and focal stacking across different planes. Once the raw micrographs and macroscopic Petri dish photos are captured, the digital post-processing begins.
In Photoshop, I focus on non-destructive editing: removing Petri dish glare and background artifacts, standardizing black or white backgrounds for macroscopic colonies (both obverse and reverse views), and assembling multi-panel plates with consistent lighting. Most importantly, every micrograph is precisely calibrated using stage micrometer references to embed accurate scale bars. Presenting fungal biodiversity through clean, publication-grade visuals bridges the gap between raw lab observations and impactful scientific storytelling.