Setting and Clearing Blank Images

When long exposures or high gain will be used, you may want to remove a blank from your spectra. Expert spectroscopists will recommend you to always remove a blank spectra taken in the same conditions (exposure time, gain, averaging…).

Once you have identified the exposure and gain settings that you need to use, disable your laser source and take an acquisition. The resulting noise spectrum will be your blank measurement. Some users may refer to this as a “dark image” but it refers to the same concept.

Spectrum Analyzer allows you to remove this spectrum from all the spectra that you will later acquire by clicking the set blank button:

Once you clicked the button, the program will tell you that it is waiting for data:

You may then acquire your spectra using either the single or multiple acquisition buttons.

You may also discard the blank data if it is not applicable anymore (different exposure/gain settings etc.) by clicking on the clear blank button:

Blank data will be saved in the Spectre file next to the data so that you can eventually disable it later. Blank data will not be saved separately to CSV files and CSV or clipboard data will always have the blank subtraction enabled.