Drawing a chessboard using Stack Tools

A really non optimized way for Drawing a Chessboard but a good opportunity to explore the functions available in Image > Stacks, specially those located in the submenu Stacks > Tools.

In this algorithm, we use three functions available in Image > Stacks. They are:

• Image > Stacks > Images to Stack
• Image > Stacks > Tools > Concatenate... In this function, the two stacks can be the same. You don't need the duplication of the original stack.
• Image > Stacks > Tools > Reverse

 Fig.1: Steps to create the chessboard from two black and white cells

The algorithm described in the scheme of Fig. 1 is the following:

1. Create two cells: one in black and the other in white with newImage(...).
2. Create a 2-slices stack.
3. Concatenate two 2-slices stacks.
4. Concatenate two 4-slices stacks to create a 8-slices stack: yes ! you get your first row.
5. Duplicate the row and reverse the order of the cells.
6. Then, concatenate the first two rows of the chessboard (16-slices stack).
7. Finally, proceed by successive concatenation to get a 32-slices stack and the 64-slices stack. 
8. To see the chessboard, compute a montage of 8 rows per 8 columns. Et voilà.

Here is the script

+++ IJ snippet +++

	//
	// Chessboard using Stack Tool
	// Jean-Christophe Taveau
	// http://crazybiocomputing.blogspot.com
	//
	// 1- White Unit cell
	newImage("cell-white", "8-bit White", 32, 32, 1);
	// 2- Black Unit Cell
	run("Duplicate...", "title=cell-black");
	run("Invert");
	// 3- Row
	run("Images to Stack", "method=[Copy (center)] name=Stack title=cell use");
	run("Concatenate...", "stack1=Stack stack2=Stack title=[tmp]");
	run("Concatenate...", "stack1=tmp stack2=tmp title=[row]");
	run("Duplicate...", "title=row-1 duplicate");
	run("Reverse");
	// 4- Rows assembly
	run("Concatenate...", "stack1=row stack2=row-1 title=[two_rows]");
	run("Concatenate...", "stack1=two_rows stack2=two_rows title=[four_rows]");
	run("Concatenate...", "stack1=four_rows stack2=four_rows title=[eight_rows]");
	run("Make Montage...", "columns=8 rows=8 scale=1 first=1 last=64 increment=1 border=0 font=12");
	exit();

view raw gistfile1.js hosted with ❤ by GitHub

+++ End of IJ snippet +++

These functions are really useful to edit small videos loaded as stacks (maybe the subject of a post).