Opening PIC files in Photoshop

This method describes how to directly open a Biorad .PIC file in Adobe Photoshop, without first changing the file to a "known" format.

1. Start Photoshop, and under the File menu, click "Open As".


2. Select the file you wish to open by clicking on it once only.


3. Under the "Open As" box, click the black arrow and scroll down to "Raw (*.RAW)" and click on this option. Then press "Okay".


4. In the Dimensions area in the "Width" and "Height" boxes enter the dimensions of your images. For Biorad images collected under COMOS, these numbers will usually be 768 (width) and 512 (height).


5. In Channels, the "Count" will usually be "1" and the "Depth" will be "8 bits". If not, change them.


6. In the Header area, enter the "Size" as 76 bytes. (The header is where some of the information pertaining to how the image was collected is stored. Consider it as an "offset" from the start of the file before the actual image data commences.)


7. Click "Okay".


8. A message stating "Specified image is smaller than file; open anyway?" will likely appear. Ignore this and click "Okay".


9. The image will then open.


10. It is worth checking that the image is opened as a "grayscale" image. To do this, go to "Image, Mode", and check that "grayscale" is ticked. In some circumstances files may be opened as "indexed colour" images and this might be important if you wish to merge different images together.


11. It is recommended that you save your file in the uncompressed TIFF file format. Unless you have a specific need and also understand the possible consequences, do not save your files as JPG files.