RECOMMENDED PROCEDURE

1. Mount the specimen dead center on the SEM stub.
2. Adjust the brightness and contrast to clearly differentiate the specimen from the background. This will permit easier adjustment of the final images when they are exported into Adobe Photoshop.
3. Capture the specimen through 360° of rotation using 15° or 18° increments (for a total of either 20 or 25 images), with the electron gun perpendicular or slightly angled above the equator of the specimen. Smaller angular increments could be used for a smoother object movie, however since smaller angular increments result in more images, more time would be required to prepare the final movie. More images also result in larger file sizes.
4. Import the images into Photoshop, and remove the background, either using the magic wand tool or by manually selecting and deleting the background.
5. Export the images as PICT files.
6. Run Apple’s QuickTime VR Studio application and create a new object.
7. Define the object by inputting the number of images and the degree increments.
8. Import the images into QuickTime VR Authoring Studio.
9. Adjust compression, object and playback through ‘Settings’.
10. Create the object.