Chromatography Forum

This may be (probably is) a stupid question but I'm new to GC and want to include some traces in my first publication...the actual traces are a bit messy and I guess I am wondering how people clean up the traces and number and name the peaks on traces that are destined for journal publication. I guess I could import into photoshop and do some of it there but I figured plenty of other folks must have done this.

My aim is to communicate the data better not to get rid of bad peak shape etc!!

Thanks for any suggestions

JB

Photoshop will work, but I find Illustrator to be more useful for improving the look of a chromatogram. It's a somewhat more challenging program to use, so if you're not familiar with it you may struggle a bit.

Print a PDF formated chromatogram from whatever GC software you're using and then import that into Illustrator. Adding a 1 or 2 pixel stroke to the chromatogram path smooths it out and makes it thicker and easier to see when printed.

With Agilent I've copied the chromatogram to clipboard, then pasted into Wordpad, then into Word.

That is not a stupid question.

I usually work with the chromatography software first to get as clean a trace as possible (minimum number of peaks labelled, only salient portion of chromatogram showing, scaled to emphasize peak(s) of interest, etc), then copy to clipboard and paste into a graphic editor. I don't actually have Photoshop or Illustrator, but you can do quite a bit with Powerpoint.

If you export your chromatogram as an "andi" file (*.cdf), you can use a program called Chrom Merge to insert it directly in word processor documents:

http://www.chrommerge.com/

Thank you all for your help - just a wonderful community.

I will try and limit the extraneous info on the chromatogram and then export as suggested.

Again, thank you and seasons greetings to all!

JB