Image Processing Toolbox User's Guide Previous page   Next Page

Using Modular Tools

To use the modular tools to create custom graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for image processing applications, follow this general procedure:

  1. Display the target image in a figure window.
  1. Image processing applications typically include the display of the target image, i.e., the image being processed. You can use the imshow function as the foundation for your GUI application. (You can also use the MATLAB image and imagesc functions.) See Displaying the Target Image for more information.

  1. Create the modular tool, specifying the target image.
  1. The modular tools operate on an image. When you create a tool, you must associate it with a target image. Most of the tools associate themselves with the image in the current axes, by default. But you can specify the handle to a specific image object, or a handle to a figure, axes, or uipanel object that contains an image. See Specifying the Target Image for more information.

    Depending on how you designed your GUI, you might also want to specify the parent object of the modular tool. This is optional; by default, the tools either use the same parent as the target image or open in a separate figure window. If you want to change this default, you must specify the parent. See Specifying the Parent of a Modular Tool for more information.

    In addition, when you create custom GUIs, you might need to specify the position of the graphics objects in the GUI, including the modular tools. See Positioning the Modular Tools in a GUI for more information.

  1. Set up interactivity between the tool and the target image.
  1. This is an optional step. The modular tools all set up their interactive connections to the target image automatically. However, your GUI might require some additional connectivity. See Making Connections for Interactivity.

The following sections provide more detail on these steps. For a complete illustration, see Example: Building a Pixel Information GUI.


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