Digital post processing can be accomplished by using GIMP or PhotoShop. This can include:
- Contrast enhancement: Dark parts of the image are made darker and bright parts are made brigher. THis often increases the crispiness of the image without the need of sharpening.
- Sharpening: The software detects corners and locally increases image contrast.
- Stitching: Several overlapping images are combined into a single larger picture using panorama software. This is frequently done when the magnification is too high for the camera to capture the whole specimen at once.
- Stacking: Several images taken at a different focus level are combined into one final, completely sharp image.
- HDR imaging: Several images with different brightnesses are combined to produce a final image in which all parts of the picture are correctly exposed.
- Cropping: This is the removal of unnecessary parts of a picture.
- Averaging: Several images of the same specimen are averaged. This improves the signal-to-noise ratio of the image and also removes movement. Only the constant parts of the picture will be shown.
- Background cleanup: this is the manual removal of dust from the background. The picture will simply look much better this way.