It is important to note that Rasband never sought to replace commercial image analysis solutions. In part, this is because a good part of the functionality of NIH Image or ImageJ was created as a result of there not being another solution, commercial or open source to do it. Of course, out of necessity to be a full featured program, NIH Image and ImageJ recapitulated many of the features present in a commercial image processing program such as Adobe Photoshop. Certainly, many of the NIH image and ImageJ users were first attracted to using the software because they couldn’t afford an expensive seat license for specialized commercial image analysis packages. But many users of ImageJ also use commercial software, so clearly that is not the only draw and in fact many imaging software companies also use and recommend ImageJ. As well, many commercial tools have emulated the key concepts of ImageJ, for example most modern analysis programs now offer some sort of scripting functionality.
