Learn how to create species figure plates using Photoshop
When you have more than one illustration or image that represents one species, a figure plate can be used to combine everything into one image.
In a previous post on how to illustrate species characters using herbarium specimens, I described a simple way that this may be done. Now that you have your beautiful drawings and they are all scanned in, the question is how you will you present these in a professional way? The answer is in creating what is called figure plates.
I use Photoshop to arrange different illustrations of the same species into one neat figure. Let me take you through the process step by step. (There are different versions of photoshop, which all work similarly with regards to the tools used to create figure plates. The latest version of Photoshop is being used in this example.)
To start, let’s open up your scan in Photoshop. (Getting high resolution scans of your illustrations will result in high quality figure plates. If needed, the brightness, contrast and the blacks and whites can be adjusted once the image is imported into Photoshop.)
The next step will be to create a canvas for your figure plate. Go to Image (top ribbon) then select Canvas size.
The size of your plate might be dependent on journal specifications. Consider the size of an A4 page (21.0 x 29.7 cm) before deciding on the width and height of your canvas.
Now that you have your empty canvas, let’s start your plate!
In the below image, we have a scanned page full of leaves of different species. I only need one of those leaves for the species I would like to make a figure plate for. On the left vertical ribbon, you will see a square cutting (or Marquee) tool. Luckily, Photoshop will tell you the name of each tool when you hover over it. Select your marquee tool and draw a box around the illustration that you want. Then left click on your mouse and select Layer via copy.
You will notice, that on the bottom right side of your screen, your number of layers will increase. You started with “Layer 1” (your full plate) and now you have a “Layer 2” (the selection that you just made and copied). Remember to always make sure that you are on the correct layer when you are making a selection. If you left click on the illustration that you just copied, you will find that you can select between layer 1 or layer 2.
You want to select layer 2.
Once the correct layer is selected, you will use the Move tool to move this layer from the scan tab to the new figure plate tab. Drag the drawing to the Figure plate tab by holding the right mouse click down.
This will open the blank figure plate and drop your drawing onto it. Because of the size of your canvas compared to your original scan, the small leaf drawing from the previous tab is a lot larger in your figure plate tab.
You need to grab your scale bar from the original scan as well. Ensure that you are now on layer 1 before you start cutting out your scale bar. Your scale bar will become layer 3 and you will use the move tool to drag it over onto your plate where you have already dragged your leaf.
Now that you have both your leaf and your scale bar on your figure plate, you need to decrease the size of both of them so that you can fit more drawings onto your plate.
Select your leaf layer and then click CTRL and T on your keyboard. You will see a blue box form around the drawing that you will be transforming (hence the CTRL T).
Once you have this blue box, you will notice that there are new options under your top horizontal ribbon. These options allow you to adjust the width and height of your drawing using percentage. If you type in 50%, your image will be half the size of what it currently is.
The height and width are automatically linked so you don’t need to worry too much about it unless you are using an older version of photoshop. If the height and width are not linked, click the link icon to ensure that they are (or else your image will be stretched out of proportion).
Once you change the percentage of your image size, click on any icon to remove the blue transformation box on your drawing. It is very important to do exactly the same transformation to your scale bar, to make sure that your scale bar is representing the real life size of the structure you have drawn.
Happiness.
Are you ready to add another plant part to your plate? Let’s choose a fruit from the original scan.
Following the same steps described above, cut a copy of your fruit drawing from layer 1, and don’t forget your scale bar.
Transform your fruit image and scale bar using the steps described above.
After dragging and transforming your fruit drawing, you might realize that you have unwanted lines and marks from your original scan. Let’s remove those marks using another tool called the Lasso tool, which allows you to draw a scribble around the unwanted part.
You can now either delete the selected space (by clicking delete on your keyboard), or you can left click and select Fill.
A pop up will appear and you need to select white by the content drop down.
This will fill the cut space with white and cover the unwanted lines.
You may however notice that part of the white space from your new drawing is covering the drawing that is already on your plate. As seen below, the white space around the fruit drawing is covering the drawing of the leaf.
You can either use the Lasso tool as shown above to get rid of the extra white space, or you can use the Magic wand.
The magic wand tool is a smart cutter. It selects similarly coloured parts of your image (in this case, black pen) and removes anything that doesn’t look the same (white space).
You can then delete the selected parts so that there is no longer white space around your drawing. The magic wand tool is not always helpful (sometimes it selects more than it should, unless you set the tolerance to a required percentage, which I haven’t tried yet); in most instances you will use the Lasso tool.
Now that you know how to get your images onto your figure plate and get them to the right size. You can add letters onto your plate using the Type tool. (The text can be edited using the ribbon that is displayed once text is added. Journal guidelines should be checked for any font specifications.)
You may be wondering how you can make a neat scale bar to replace the hand drawn one; you can use the Rectangle tool to do this.
Draw a rectangle to match your drawn scale bar. In the bottom right hand corner you can change the name of your scale bar layer, so that you can remove any hand written notes using one of the cutting tools.
Note: In the examples shown here, all of the scale bars represent 5 mm for each of the different plant parts. If you would like to use the same 5 mm scale bar for two drawings then you would need to stretch or shrink (during transformation) the scale bar of the second drawing to match the scale bar of the first. You must then make a note of the percentage change to the scale bar during transformation and then make the same change to the drawing it represents. You can then delete the second scale bar since it is now a duplicate of the other one.
In some of your drawings, your scale bar might represent 2.5 mm instead of 5 mm. If you would like to use the same 5 mm scale bar for both of these drawings, then you would do the same as above (stretch the scale bar during transformation and take a note of the percentage change to make the same change to the drawing). This time however, you will also need to do a calculation to determine the percentage change between the two numbers on the two scale bars. For instance, 2.5 mm is half of 5 mm, therefore to make the two scale bars the same, you will need to double the drawing size (200%) so that it agrees with the 5 mm scale bar (only do this after you have already transformed the drawing to match the scale bars transformation).
Now, you can put everything that you have learnt together and you will be able to create a lovely figure plate for each of your species.
This figure plate can then be placed alongside a distribution map and put inside a bold border (I usually do this part in PowerPoint).
Now you have a scientific work of art!
Acknowledgment: Thank you to Luvo Magoswana for his valuable review of this article.
