ScaleBarIT

About ScaleBarIT

• ScaleBarIT adds scale bars to images quickly and efficiently. The basic steps involve choosing your image, specifying its pixel size, then choosing a region of interest and finally adding your scale bar of choice.
• Dan has built this capability during his PhD from a Materials Science background and hopes the distribution of this app will provide a tailored and simple solution to adding scale bars to images.

Using ScaleBarIT

• To use ScaleBarIT, you can download the installation binary from the GitHub repository linked to this record.
• Once installed, please refer to the user guide, `ScaleBarITHelp.md` and examples within the repository to guide you in using ScaleBarIT.
• Consider supporting Dan at Buy me a coffee.

Installation

Supported operating systems (Windows OS)

• ScaleBarIT will install on Windows OS.
• Included in the files are .exe for download with Windows OS (version 2.0).
• Development for compatibility with Windows OS will be prioritised and as such newer versions will be available for Windows OS. There are currently no plans to release binaries for Linux.

Dependencies

• There are no dependencies for the supported OS, the `.exe` (Windows OS) installation binary will install all the required dependencies.
• Whilst ScaleBarIT was written in and compiled using Matlab 2025b, you do not need to have Matlab installed on your system.
• The MATLAB Runtime installer for 2025b will be required to run this app, although this should be downloaded automatically from Mathworks during installation. If not, this can be found at: https://uk.mathworks.com/products/compiler/matlab-runtime.html.
• The default_settings.txt file contains customisation capability for the app. Please ensure this is in the same folder as the app. If the app successfully finds the .txt file, upon app loading, the text box in the bottom left will be populated with custom default settings applied. Otherwise, the master default settings will be applied.

Codebase access and licensing

There are currently no plans to release the underlying codebase under a free software license. If you are interested in the underlying codebase, or developing this, please contact Daniel Scotson.