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RES.10-001 | Spring 2026 | Undergraduate

# Making Science and Engineering Pictures: A Practical Guide to Presenting Your Work

Once you’ve captured a quality image of your device or object, there is still work to do. This week we will investigate how best to incorporate your pictures into figures for publication, and to use them as powerful means to speak with the public. In addition, an important component in this week will be a discussion of image enhancement—how far are we permitted to go when adjusting images in science?

## Topics

Using your photographs in figures, showing scale, movement, and submitting for covers and homepages.

## Assignment

- Think about the way Felice incorporated photographs into informational figures in Video 18: Designing Graphics. Using this as a guide, find an existing informational figure that includes a photo. You may find examples in a textbook, journal article, technical brochure / manual, or other resource. Critique the figure and the image in it. What works well in this figure? What does not? How could the figure be improved?
- Create an informational figure of your own. Use one of the images you’ve take in this course to build two versions
  - A figure for a technical audience (for a journal or a grant submission)
  - A figure for the publicCarefully consider these figure legends, labeling, titling, what to add and what to subtract. Comment on the differences between them and what you think works well in the figures you’ve created.
- After watching and listening to this week’s case study on image enhancement, do you think it was acceptable for Felice to make these three changes:
  1. Adjust the color of some of the rods when the film did not capture the color orange
  2. Delete the cracks in the agar
  3. Adjust the histogram for the gel runs

## Visual Index

Week 5 Visual Index (PDF)

## Summing Up

Week 5 Summary (PDF)

## Course Videos

##### Video 18: Designing Graphics

##### Video 19: Time and Scale

##### Video 20: Cover Submissions

##### Video 21: Image Enhancement

##### Video 22: Speaking to the Public

## Course Info

##### Instructor

- Felice C. Frankel

##### Departments

- Chemical Engineering

##### As Taught In

Spring 2026

##### Level

Undergraduate

##### Topics

- Engineering
  - Computer Science
    - Artificial Intelligence
- Fine Arts
  - Visual Arts
    - Graphic Design
    - Photography
- Health and Medicine
- Science
  - Biology
  - Chemistry
  - Physics
- Teaching and Education

##### Learning Resource Types

assignment_turned_in Activity Assignments with Examples
co_present Instructor Insights
equalizer Lecture Audio
theaters Lecture Videos

Browse Resources

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