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These notes apply to ImageJ 1.32 and later, which is distributed as a Windows installer. The notes for earlier versions distribued as a ZIP archive are available at rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/docs/install/windows2.html

Requirements
ImageJ requires Windows 95 or later. It runs on a machine with 64MB but it runs better with 256MB or more, particularly when working with large images and/or stacks.

Memory
Use the Edit/Options/Memory command to make more than 128MB available to ImageJ. Specifying more than about 75% of real RAM may result in virtual memory "thrashing". The maximum amount of memory that can be allocated is about 1.7 GB.

Upgrading
To upgrade to the latest version of ImageJ, replace the ij.jar file in the ImageJ folder with a newer one from http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/upgrade/.

Drag and Drop
The Windows version of ImageJ opens images, text files, ROIs and LUTs dropped on the title bar or menu bar of the "ImageJ" window. On Windows 2000/XP, it opens files dropped on the ImageJ shortcut, but another copy of ImageJ is launched if ImageJ is already running.

Known Problems

  1. Java 1.4.2 crashes when running ImageJ. This bug has been reported to Sun and is fixed in the Java 1.5 beta.
  2. ImageJ cannot use more than about 1.7GB of memory, regardless of how much RAM is installed.
Using ImageJ with Java 1.5
  1. Install the Java 1.5 SDK at java.sun.com/j2se/. (Do not install Java 1.4.2. It has a bug that causes ImageJ to crash when you use the Measure command.)
  2. Create a copy of ImageJ.exe by right-clicking on it, dragging, and selecting "Copy Here" from the popup menu. Rename the copy something like "ImageJ15.exe".
  3. Create a copy of ImageJ.cfg by right-clicking on it, dragging, and selecting "Copy Here" from the popup menu. Rename the copy something like "ImageJ15.cfg".
  4. Open Image15.cfg in a text editor such as Notepad and edit the second line so it looks something like

       C:\sdk1.5\bin\javaw.exe

    where C:\sdk1.5 is the directory where you installed Java 1.5.

  5. Copy (not move) tools.jar from C:\sdk1.5\lib to C:\sdk1.5\jre\lib\ext. (This is needed for the "Compile and Run" command to work.)
  6. Run ImageJ using Java 1.5 by double-clicking on "ImageJ15".

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