Macros are simple custom programming scripts that automate tasks inside a large piece of software. Due to its rather basic programming format, general users can create macros with no formal programming experience. Rasband added a macro language to NIH Image in 1989 after Rasband saw an article titled “Building Your Own C Interpreter.” He realized he could use the source code that was included in the article to create a Pascal language interpreter. The macro language of ImageJ is based on that in NIH Image. Similar to how the Pascal based macro language stayed very constant in NIH Image, ImageJ’s macro language has stayed very stable over the last 15 years. Many new commands have been added, but the early commands all still work. While macros are used by programmers, they are especially useful to the bench biologist with approximately 325 macros currently available on the ImageJ website. The macros require little or no programming experience and novel features like the macro recorder directly facilitate this, allowing the user to record any actions they manually do. This recording is put
