ImageJ software, created by Lev Manovich, uses algorithms and plugin tools to visually analyze and organize large quantities of images at the macro level. Though I only spent three days experimenting with the software and plugins, art historians and those who study two-dimensional images may enjoy its ability to discover patterns in hundreds or thousands of images. Through analyzing images objectively, ImageJ breaks from the tradition of subjective investigation in the humanities, which can answer and create new research questions.

However, ImageJ may be a bit daunting to someone who has little experience extracting data from ZIP files, running macros, and installing plugins. In order to make some of the software’s plugins work, ImageJ requires using images of the same size and spreadsheets with information correlated to the images. Creating a spreadsheet may take additional time, but users can customize variables and macros like ImageMeasure can analyze quantitative variables, such as hue, that users can copy into spreadsheets. With practice and time, users unfamiliar with computer science can create image folders and data sheets to take full advantage of ImageJ’s capabilities.

The ImagePlot macro was my favorite plugin to use because one can compare variables of a set of images with an X-Y axis to discover patterns or see how variables affect one another.

The ImageSlice plugin condenses images into slivers and displays them side by side. While this tool may help one see numerous images all at once, I do not know how one can use this tool to answer a research question, since it organizes images by file name.

Unfortunately, I was unable to make ImageMontage work, but after judging the screenshots of the plugin on the ImageJ website, the tool appears to be suited for massive sets of images. Most computers’ file viewers only display 20 images simultaneously, while ImageMontage can display hundreds or thousands in a single view, useful for macro-level analysis