Some Reasons to Upgrade to Igor Pro 8

The following are highlights of the new features we have added to Igor Pro 8 since version 7:

Click here for more details.

1. Object names are now limited to 255 bytes, versus 31 bytes in Igor Pro 7
2. New Window Browser
3. New Toolbar provides easier access to frequently used features
4. The redesigned Procedure Browser allows you to quickly find and filter symbols (functions, macros, etc)
5. New Box Plot and Violin Plot graph types make it easy to show the distribution of values within a data set.
6. Procedure windows and the command line now suggest options to complete the current command
7. New Back and Forward buttons in procedure and notebook windows allow you to quickly navigate in these window types
8. New Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) operation and seven other transformations
9. New built-in Voigt and dblexp_peak fit functions, threadsafe ODR fitting with built-in parallelization
10. Igor Filter Design Laboratory (IFDL), which was previously a separate paid product, is now part of Igor Pro 8
11. Greatly improved the speed of creating and looking up waves by name when there are many similarly-named waves in a data folder
12. Drawing speed of graph traces on High-DPI displays under some specific circumstances is dramatically improved
13. Improved speed of displaying notebooks, help windows, and procedure windows

Some Reasons to Upgrade to Igor Pro 7

The following are highlights of the new features we have added to Igor Pro 7 since version 6.3:

1. 64-bit architecture on both Windows and Macintosh allows increased memory usage and larger waves and datasets. (32-bit applications are still available.)
2. Igor Pro 7 uses Unicode internally, improving the rendering of mathematical symbols and foreign characters.
3. Unlimited undo/redo for all procedure code and notebook editing, and for most interactive graph and layout adjustments.
4. Support for high-resolution displays.
5. Transparent colors: You can now use partially transparent (non-opaque) colors in most places where color can be controlled, such as line and fill colors, by specifying an RGBA color value instead of an RGB color value (the A stands for alpha).
6. Error ranges on a graph can now be represented using shading.
7. Specify gradient fills for drawing elements, graph trace fills, and graph window and plot area fills using the new "gradient" keyword with the ModifyGraph, ModifyLayout, or SetDrawEnv operations.
8. View live video and capture images from supported hardware cameras.
9. Most data file manipulation functionality previously provided by XOPs is now built in:
   • XLLoadWave (loads Excel files).
   • MLLoadWave (loads Matlab MAT files, requires Matlab 2010b or later).
   • JCAMPLoadWave (loads JCAMP-DX spectroscopy data).
   • GBLoadWave (loads general binary data).
   • SoundLoadWave and SoundSaveWave (loads and saves sound files).
10. Functionality provided by the following Igor Pro 6 XOPs is now built in:
    • Gizmo
    • Data Browser
    • GetInputState
    • HFSAndPosix (Macintosh only)
11. Gizmo was completely rewritten for Igor Pro 7:
    • Gizmo windows and dialogs now function like other window types and dialogs.
    • Regular Igor annotations such as text boxes and color scales can now be added to Gizmo windows.
    • Gizmos can now also be hosted in other window types such as Graphs, Layouts, and Control Panels.
    • New Gizmo Image and 3D bar objects.
    • Numerical label text rendering has been greatly improved.
12. The Data Browser has been completely rewritten and modernized:
    • Drag waves from the Data Browser directly onto tables, graphs, and the command line.
    • Right click the header to display additional object information such as size, # of points, dimensionality, creation and modification dates, type, lock status, and symbolic path (for waves). Sort by any column by clicking that column's header.
    • Right-click on an object and select "Where Is Object Used" to bring up a dialog showing you where the object is used.
13. Page Layout improvements:
    • Page layouts can now contain multiple pages. The different pages in a layout are shown in a new page sorter that appears on the left side of the layout window.
    • Page layouts can now be displayed as a slide show for full-screen presentation of Igor graphics and results, useful for running a standalone kiosk.
14. Over 40 new built-in commands, including:
    • SplitWave, FindDuplicates, SortColumns, ListToTextWave, ListToWaveRefWave, WaveRefWaveToList, JointHistogram, SumSeries, SumDimension, FindContour, DPSS, MultiTaperPSD, ICA, URLRequest, GetEnvironmentVariable, SetEnvironmentVariable, UnsetEnvironmentVariable, LambertW, gammaEuler, sinIntegral, cosIntegral, expIntegralE1, zeta, Dilogarithm, ImageSkeleton3D, Jacobi elliptic functions JacobiSn and JacobiCn
15. Over 20 commands, including WaveStats and MatrixOp, have internal code that can automatically execute some or all calculations in multiple threads.
16. MatrixOP supports an additional 50 functions.
17. Image Processing improvements:
    • Added 14 interactive dialogs for image analysis operations, such as Particle Analysis and Line Profile.
    • Automatic multi-threading: When possible, computations are automatically done in parallel for a number of image processing operations, including ImageInterpolate, ImageLineProfile, ImageThreshold, ImageEdgeDetection, ImageRestore, ImageFilter, ImageBlend, ImageStats, and ImageRotate.
18. Most operations on text waves now execute much faster due to a (backwards compatible) implementation change of how text is stored.
19. The Debugger has been substantially improved:
    • Greatly improved Table view of waves.
    • String Inspector allows direct editing of long strings.
    • Structures and structure elements directly editable in Variables tree.
20. Procedure editing improvements:
    • You can edit Igor procedure files in an external editor. Igor monitors open text files for changes and automatically reloads the file when its contents have changed.
    • Easily find functions and other programming constructs from the new Procedure window Navigation Bar.
    • Optional Line Numbers in the margin.
    • New C-like syntax for inline function parameters
    • Line continuation.
    • <<, >>, ++, and -- operators.
    • Paste colorized procedure text into HTML-aware applications.
21. Text Searching: Search text faster using the new Find bar, available in all windows that display text. All matches to the find string are highlighted at once so it's easier to find the instance you're looking for.

For full details of the new features in Igor Pro 7 click here.

Some Reasons to Upgrade to Igor Pro 6.3

Following are a few highlights of the new features we have added to Igor Pro since version 6.2:

1. Added a Batch Curve Fitting package.
2. Added the Scatter Dot Plot Panel.
3. Six New functions and operations, including AdoptFiles and GetMouse.
4. Six New example experiments, including Multithreading, Batch Curve Fit, and Scatter Dot Plot demo experiments.
5. Improved the compiler's checking for wave assignments that don't function as expected.
6. Fixed Bugs .
7. It's still a free update from Igor 6.0, 6.1, or 6.2.

For a summary of the new features in Igor 6.3 click here .

Some Reasons to Upgrade to Igor Pro 6.2

Following are a few highlights of the new features we have added to Igor Pro since version 6.1:

1. Igor starts up faster.
2. You can now customize the appearance of single points on a trace in a graph for bar, marker, dot and lines-to-zero modes.
3. Legend symbols can now show the conditions at a specific point on a trace by appending the point number in brackets to the trace name.
4. Greatly improved the Gizmo (3D visualization) procedures, adding new Append Annotation, Append Image, and Zoom panels.
5. XLLoadWave supports .xlsx files.
6. Improved FTP support and new HTTP functionality.
7. Fixed Bugs .
8. A 64-bit version is available for Windows.
9. It's a free update from Igor 6.0 or 6.1.

For a summary of the new features in Igor 6.2 click here .

Some Reasons to Upgrade to Igor Pro 6.1

Following are a few highlights of the new features we have added to Igor Pro since version 6.0:

1. The principal change in 6.1 is the use of more modern graphics code for drawing graphs, tables and page layouts. On Macintosh this involves the radical change of using Apple's Quartz routines rather than the venerable QuickDraw routines . On Windows just slightly more advanced code is used with a small amount of GDI+ instead of GDI .
2. Rotated text (annotations, tick labels, etc) in one degree increments.
3. New SQL XOP.
4. Notebook subwindows can be embedded in control panels.
5. Igor now also loads extensions, procedures, and help files from a new "Igor Pro User Files" folder, whose location guarantees write access by the user even if they don't have administrator privileges.
6. Improved Multi-peak Fitting and Ternary Plot packages.
7. Macintosh only: PDF export and long file names.
8. It's a free update from Igor 6.0.

For comprehensive summary of the new features in Igor 6.1 click here .

Igor 6.1 System Requirements

On Macintosh, Igor Pro 6.1 requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later and runs natively on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macintoshes.

On Windows, Igor Pro 6.1 requires Windows XP or later.

Ten Reasons to Upgrade from Igor Pro 5 to Igor Pro 6.0

Following are a few highlights of the new features we have added to Igor Pro since version 5:

1. Runs natively on Intel-based Macintosh.
2. Massive new Statistics support .
3. Builtin FIR and IIR filtering.
4. Magnify text in help, procedure, and notebook windows.
5. Floating tool palette and info panel.
6. Graphs can have up to 10 cursors.
7. Tables display huge number of columns much more quickly.
8. Quick Fit menu item for quick and easy access to built-in fitting functions.
9. Multi-threaded programming and curve fitting.
10. Hide built-in menus to create completely custom menus, including color menus.

A comprehensive summary of the new features follows. (For an even more detailed look at the new features click here .)

Igor 6.0 System Requirements

On Macintosh, Igor Pro 6.0 runs on Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later. Igor Pro 6 runs natively on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macintoshes. Igor Pro 6.0 does not run on Mac OS 9.

On Windows, Igor Pro 6.0 runs under Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. Igor Pro 6.0 does not run on Windows NT, Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows ME.

User Interface

Graphs, tables and layouts as well as subwindows within graphs and panels may now be hidden. This, in combination with the new Graph Browser package, should greatly ease the difficulty of working with large numbers of graph windows.The Windows menu now includes a Hide submenu for hiding multiple windows at once and a Show menu for showing multiple windows at once.

The Windows menu now includes a Recent Windows submenu to make it easier to re-activate windows that you were recently working on.

You can now magnify text in any text document.

New per-window marquee: Now, each window or subwindow can have its own marquee. Marquees are no longer killed when a different window is made active.

The tool palette for graphs and panels and the info panel for graphs are now created external to the host window. This ensures all the tools and cursor information are visible even when the host window is small.

Fling mode for graphs: You can now fling a graph using the hand tool to automatically scroll through large data sets.

Dialog Improvements

Now, for operations that can produce a matrix result, such as FFT or Convolve, you can choose to display the result as an image or contour plot.

Graphing Improvements

You can now cause a y axis to be autoscaled to the subset of data defined by the current x axis range.

You can now autoscale just one end of an axis.

You can now mask individual points for display.

New styles are now available for arrowMarker mode and you can now draw arrows between points.

You can now have up to 10 cursors.

You can now scale a trace in addition to offsetting.

Table Improvements

You can now choose the decimal symbol (dot or comma) used when entering data in tables.

The target cell ID area in the top-left corner of the table now identifies wave element corresponding to the target cell.

Save Table Copy to a text file now includes the horizontal row of dimension labels if they are displayed.

Greatly improved display speed with a very large number of columns.

You can now independently adjust the width and properties of columns for a multidimensional wave.

You can autosize the columns of a wave.

You can show and hide various parts of a table.

Notebook Improvements

Special characters (e.g., pictures, date, time) now have names. Advanced programmers can list, get info and find by name.

Added a new kind of special character called an "action". An action is a special character which, when clicked, executes Igor commands.

You can now magnify text.

Gizmo Improvements

ColorScales can now be defined by a color wave with an arbitrary number of entries. ColorScales now also have an optional depth to obtain a 3D appearance.

You can now provide a numerical wave for tickmark positions and a text wave for tickmark labels for each one of the 12 box axes.

There are now built-in box-axes labels.

Added support for Quaternary plots using scatter or path objects.

Isosurfaces can now be saved as triangle waves.

Drawing Improvements

New arrow styles for Draw tools.

New coordinate transformations including translate, rotate, scale and origin.

New named groups for Draw tools using SetDrawEnv with keywords gname and gedit.

New operation DrawAction provides support for deleting, inserting and reading back a named group or entire draw layer. Useful for region of interest (ROI) readback for image processing.

New snap grid for draw and control layout.

Can now rotate draw objects.

When dragging, resizing or rotating, a live outline of the object(s) is presented.

You can now resize multiple selected objects.

Annotation Improvements

ColorScales can frame up to 98 individual colors, the frame color can be different than the annotation's foreground color, the axis range can be manually set, and date axis tick labels are supported.

You can now adjust line spacing.

Control Improvements

New snap grid for draw and control layout.

ListBoxes now support graph and picture images.

ListBoxes and other controls now support mousewheel.

SetVariable now supports a matrix wave.

Control Panel Improvements

New noEdit keyword and no-activate mode for panels

You can now create panels that act like subwindows but live in their own windows attached to a host graph window. The host graph and its exterior subwindows move together and, in general, act as single window.

You can now create panels that float above all other windows.

Statistics Improvements

Massive new Statistics support. See Statistics for details. Includes 32 new statistical test operations, 38 new cumulative distribution functions, 30 new probability distribution functions, 34 new inverse cumulative distribution functions, 10 random noise distributions and 17 general statistical utility functions.

Analysis Improvements

The Analysis menu was reorganized and Filter and Resample items were added along with a new Statistics submenu.

Histogram now supports two new modes for automatic determination of the number of bins.

Added the Loess operation, which smooths using locally-weighted regression smoothing. Loess can be used to interpolate over and replace NaNs.

Added the FilterFIR operation which can filter along any wave dimension, and can also generate simple digital filters, including a very steep notch filter.

Added the FilterIIR operation, which can filter along any wave dimension and generate simple IIR filters.

Added median smoothing to the Smooth operation. The median and boxcar smoothing modes now detect NaNs in the input data.

Matrix Improvements

Added new functions to MatrixOP and, for 3D operations, you can run the operation in multiple threads.

New operation: MatrixLinearSolveTD for linear solutions to tridiagonal matrices.

Curve Fitting Improvements

Added Quick Fit menu item to the Analysis menu and the Graph trace contextual menu. This provides quick access to simple fits using the built-in fitting functions.

Curve Fitting now offers Orthogonal Distance Regression in addition to ordinary least squares. This is useful for situations in which there are measurement errors in the independent variables as well as in the dependent variable.

Curve Fitting now supports fitting to implicit functions.

You can now specify a list of fitting functions to FuncFit. The result will be a fit to the sum of the functions.

All-at-once fit functions can now implement multivariate fit functions.

A new user-defined fit function format has been added that takes a single structure parameter. This allows you to transmit arbitrary data to a user-defined fit function.

You can write user-defined functions that run simultaneous curve fits in different threads to improve speed on multi-processor machines.

Fitting to a user-defined function can automatically use multiple processors.

Color Table Improvements

Added 14 new color tables: RainbowCycle, Rainbow4Cycles, GreenMagenta16, EOSOrangeBlue11, EOSSpectral11, dBZ14, dBZ21, Web216, BlueGreenOrange, BrownViolet, ColdWarm, Mocha, VioletOrangeYellow, and SeaLandAndFire.

Image Processing Improvements

New operation for processing stacks of multi-focal images.

ImageAnalyzeParticles can now provide minimum, maximum and average intensity level for each particle.

New thinning algorithm in MatrixFilter.

ImageSeedFill has three new keywords for specifying the seed pixel/voxel.

ImageTransform has new keywords: rgb2cmap,fuzzyClassify,roiTo1D and pad3d.

3D Analysis Improvements

ImageStats now supports operations on 3D ROI specification.

Data Import And Export Improvements

Substantially revised the SndLoadSaveWave XOP and ported it to Windows.

You can now specify comma as the decimal symbol when saving waves in text files.

Programming Improvements

Windows (and subwindows) may now be hidden.

The HideIgorMenus and ShowIgorMenus operations hide or show most of the built-in main menus. The trace popup contextual menu can be extended by User-Defined Menus.

User-Defined Menus can now specify Multiple Menu Items on one line, and Specialized Menu Item Definitions provide user-defined color, line style, marker, pattern, character and font menus.

New Independent Modules feature: You can now designate groups of one or more procedure files to be compiled and linked separately. Once compiled and linked, the code remains in place and is useable even though other procedures fail to compile. This allows control panels and menus to continue to function regardless of user programming errors.

You can now create multiple background tasks.

The internal method Igor uses to deallocate memory when waves are killed has been improved.

To provide support for computers with multiple processors and to allow creation of preemptive multitasking background tasks, a new class of user functions called ThreadSafe has been created.

Conditional compile using #if style compiler directives.

Miscellaneous Improvements

Added "regular expression" commands (i.e., Grep).

Print now supports wave subrange printing.