Mouse and Keyboard Controls

Mouse actions in the image display window:

Left mouse button click: Place a marker point in the image and print the coordinates and value in the middle panel of the status bar. If the Navigator window is open, the stage position in microns will be placed in the right panel of the status bar.  Several procedures make use of the position of a marker point.  If the image is an FFT that shows Thon rings, you can click at the position of the first minimum, and the program will show the estimated defocus in the status bar and draw a set of circles at the corresponding zeros of the CTF, or the program can fit to the CTF if you have that option selected.  See the FFT command help for details.  The marker point can actually be placed outside of the image, but very few operations recognize that as a valid position: the stage position in the status bar, Go to Marker in the Navigator window, and the Shift-P hot key and To Marker in the Image Alignment & Focus control panel for shifting to the marker position.

Shift - Left mouse button click: Remove the marker point if one is set.  This is useful for getting rid of unwanted rings drawn on an FFT or for showing the multiple Record pattern around the current Navigator point instead of around the marker.

Ctrl - Left mouse button click: When fitting the CTF to Thon rings in an FFT, do not search for astigmatism, just defocus.

Middle mouse button click: If the image is an FFT, the program will show the spatial frequency and periodicity (resolution) of the clicked position in the status bar.

Ctrl - middle mouse button click: Zoom up around the clicked point.

Ctrl - right mouse button click: Zoom down around the clicked point.

Left mouse button drag: Holding the left button down and moving the mouse will pan the image, if it is zoomed bigger than will fit in the window.

Shift - left mouse button drag: Draw a line for measuring a distance or angle. Press and hold the shift key, then press the left mouse button at the starting point of the line. Hold the button down and move the mouse to the desired endpoint of the line. The status bar will show a dynamic display of the line length and orientation as you move the endpoint, and the final values will be printed in the log window when you release the mouse button. You can crop out the image in a box around this line with the Crop Image command in the Process menu.

Ctrl - Shift - left mouse button drag: Draw a box for measuring size or cropping. Press and hold the shift and Ctrl keys, then press the left mouse button at one corner of the box. Hold the button down and move the mouse to the desired position of the other corner. The status bar will show a dynamic display of the box size as you move the corner. You can crop out this image area with the Crop Image command in the Process menu.  You can get its statistics with the Min/Max/Mean command in the Process menu.

Right mouse button drag: Holding the right button down and moving the mouse will change the alignment shift of the image. If the image is in buffer A, this will also change microscope image shift so that the next image acquired will match the image with this alignment shift. If there is a marker point on the image being aligned to, its position will show up in red. There is an option available to have particularly large moves with the right mouse button move the stage instead of change the microscope image shift.

Shift - right mouse button drag: Shifting the image in buffer A while holding the Shift key down will result in the stage being moved, rather than microscope image shift being changed.

Scroll wheel: The scroll wheel will zoom the image up and down unless the Ctrl key is down, as long as the mouse is over the image display window and the main program window has focus.  If the mouse if over the Navigator window and not over the image window, it will scroll the Navigator even though the main program has focus.  Similarly, when it is over the log window and not  the image window, it will scroll the log without having to click on it.

When the Navigator window is open, the mouse buttons have additional functions:

After finding points with the Hole Finder and before making them into Navigator points, the operations in the right column for including or excluding individual points take priority over other Navigator operations.

Menu shortcut keys: The keyboard can be used not only for all the hot keys listed next, but also to select almost any menu item by means of its shortcut keys.  Press Alt and the shortcut key letter of each main menu item will be underlined. Holding Alt down, you can then press one of those letters to open that menu, and you will see a letter underlined for almost all menu entries.  Press that letter to select that item or open a submenu, where more shortcut keys will be underlined.

F1 for help on menu items and dialog boxes: Pressing F1 while the mouse is over a menu item or dialog box will open the help for the given item.  This is the easiest way to open the help for a menu item and it works regardless of whether the item is enabled.  The ? button in each dialog box does the same thing as F1.

Hot keys: