Value-reading and basic geometrical operations represent the core of any data processing program. Gwyddion offers a wide set of functions for data scaling, rotation, resampling or profile extraction. This section describes these simple but essential functions.
Within basic modules it is possible to perform the following operations with 2D data field:
Moreover, the recalibration module can be used for changing the physical dimensions, data value calibration and even to change the units of values and lateral dimensions: → → .
The simpliest value reading method is to place the mouse cursor over the point you want to read value of. The coordinates and/or value is then displayed in the data window or graph window status bar.
Tool Read Value offers more value reading posibilities: It displays coordinates and values of the last point of the data window the mouse button was pressed. It can avergae the value from a circular neighbourhood around the selected point, this is controlled by option Averaging radius. When the radius is 1, the value of a single pixel is displayed (as the simplest method does). Button shifts the surface to make the current z the new zero level.
Read Value can also display the inclination of the local facet. Averaging radius again determines the radius of the area to use for the plane fit.
In all Gwyddion tools, facet and plane inclinations are displayed as the spherical angles (ϑ, φ) of the plane normal vector.
Angle ϑ is the angle between the upward direction and the normal, this means ϑ = 0 for horizontal facets and it increases with the slope. It is always positive.
Angle φ is the counter-clockwise measured angle between axis x and the projection of the normal to the xy plane, as displayed on the following figure. For facets it means φ corresponds to the downward direction of the facet.
Distances and differences can be measured with the Distance tool. It displays the horizontal (Δx), vertical (Δy) and total planar (R) distances; the azimuth φ (measured identically to inclination φ) and the endpoint value difference (Δz) for a set of lines selected on the data.
The distances can be copied to the clipboard or saved to a text file using the buttons below the list.
The profile extraction tool can be accessed from the toolbox. You can use mouse to draw several profiles in the image and they can be further moved and adjusted. The dialog includes a live profile graph preview. Profiles can be of different “thickness” which means that more neighbour data perpendicular to profile direction are used for evaluation of one profile point for thicker profiles. This can be very useful for noise suppression while measuring regular objects.
After profiles are chosen, they can be extracted to graphs (separate or grouped in one Graph window) that can be further analysed using Graph functions.
The profile curve is constructed from data sampled at regular intervals along the selected line. Values in points that do not lie exactly at pixel centres (which normally occurs for oblique lines) are interpolated using the chosen interpolation mode. Unless an explicit number of samples to take is set using the Fix res. option, the number of samples corresponds to the line length in pixels. This means that for purely horizontal or purely vertical lines no interpolation occurs.
Illustration of data sampling in profile extraction for oblique lines. The figures on the left show the points along the line where the values are read for natural and very high resolution. The graphs on the right show the extracted values. Comparison of the natural and high resolution profiles taken with Round interpolation reveals that indeed natural-resolution curve points form a subset of the high-resolution points. The influence of the interpolation method on values taken in non-grid positions is demonstrated by the lower two graphs, comparing Round and Key interpolation at high resolution.