Continuing the rant:

In practice, all the technicians know that the Auto Contrast/ Brightness
settings aren't giving good quality images.  My personal work-around is to use
ACB, then arbitrarily tweak up the contrast and down the brightness knob on the
SEM *before* capturing an image. That way I get a nice, smooth distribution
that's likely to use the full range. In contrast, most technicians hit ACB, then
take an image, then use C&B settings in a post processing image program to tweak
the histogram or to personal (visual) taste. Not soooo bad, but not ideal.  One
problem is that some technicians, perhaps knowing that before-capture ACB is
crap, probably aren't using it, and then they make big C&B changes in the image
afterwards, and save it, and THIS is the version you get. They've expertly
prepared the sample, found the area of interest, and used good focus and stig,
but it's got visible artifacts from the big post-process adjustment. This one
last step can ruin an image from being "publication quality."  Perhaps I'm being
overly pedantic, but it just seems that wrong-headed tradition on the part of
the scope manufacturers ruins things.   And the same philosophy I believe
answers some of the contrast & "calibration" images that always spring up in CG.

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