I’m experimenting with contrast stretching for BSE images. I think it might be useful to bring detail out of the 16-bit images, though it makes it more confusing to identify phases based on Z contrast (as linearity was compromised to bin the output 8-bit data into 256 percentile bins). I think a stretched and color-mapped BSE image would be useful in combination with X-ray overlays (which I have a student working on now).
![](https://presolar.physics.wustl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/colormap_16bit_test_6-1-1024x341.jpg)