Chromatography Forum

I would like to know how to present a chemstation mass spec. for publication.

To give you a partial answer:
With a different data system, I've expanded the spectrum to fill the screen appropriately and then coppied the window and then pasted that in a document. Some instruments ill leave you with a bitmap image, others will give a vector graphic image which is easier to edit. The last time I used ChemStaion, I believe the images generated were bitmap graphics.

Thank you.
I also found this
"...I've found that the best way to deal with Chromatograms for publication is to export the raw data to any genuine graph plotting program as csv data (i.e. genuine numbers) and replot. This way the plotting program can stay in line-graphics-world without pixelating, and add all my annotations and get the axis labelling right..."

So, I exported the data as CSV files and then plotted them in Sigmaplot. It is time consuming though.

At least from our 5971A and 5972A software when one copies the chromatograms into Word or Wordpad, looks pretty lame. So we've printed out on paper, then used a scanner to put into Word, jpg, or PDF. Old-fashioned, but works.

If you want the image as a Metafile (vector graphics) you can use the Chemstation following command:

CLIP [window #].
eg. CLIP 1
Will store the spectrum image in Window #1 to your Windows Clipboard. You can then paste it into any application. I used MS Power Point in the paste. You may have to use the "Paste As.." option to paste it as a Metafile. Then you can "Ungroup" the image twice and start removing the background color and recolor other parts. It can be time consuming but it does work.

I have also used export to csv to replot the data in Excel. This works well if not better than using the vector graphics. With the vector graphics, once you "ungroup" to remove parts the alignment gets screwed up (i.e., labels on axes etc.) This can be fixed by highlighting certain objects and using the various "Align" properties in MS Power Point but it's tedious and time consuming.

Thank you all!