Open J-AST and click the New project button to create a new project
Set the name of the new project and select the Timeline option for this project.
If your images are not organized in a timeline, select the option for single images.
Note: the project type can be later changed at any point
Click the + button to stage files for uploading. Then click the Upload now button to start the upload process. Afterwards close the panel.
At this point the images are organized into a dedicated drawer as J-AST does not know yet how to organize them into a timeline. For this you will need to attach metadata to the images.
First select all unsorted images by clicking the provided button. Then switch the mode to the Process tab.
Note: you can also sort images manually by dragging them around. As this becomes cumbersome for larger data sets and it is good practice to keep track of metadata we highly recommend to maximize the use of automated functions.
J-AST can automatically extract metadata from the image file name through rules. Run the Auto-fill metadata tool on the images which will open a configuration dialog where you can set up how J-AST retrieves the metadata.
As explained in the info field the tool will split the file name into parts and use them to fill the metadata fields (Assay type, Experiment, Sample, and Time point).
For the example data set the correct configuration is:
Assay type: Dynamic / 3
Experiment: Dynamic / 2
Sample: Dynamic / 1
Time point: Dynamic / 4
Note: if a metadata is fixed for all selected image (e.g., if all of them are E-Tests) and you don't have the information inside the file name, you can set the field to Static and put in the value of choice
Tip: if you have data sets with differing file name layouts, you can run the tool on subsets. Just select the images that you want to edit.
Tip: you can at any point just edit the metadata manually by going to the Edit tab
Check if the metadata that is shown as colored badges next to the image has been correctly assigned.
With all metadata set up, you can let J-AST organize the images automatically into a timeline for you.
In the Process tab select the Auto-sort by metadata operation.
Note: you can also drag images around manually.
The operation will require a single input: the correct time order. For this data set we have 24h and 48h images. Add them into the list and ensure that the order is correct.
Note: if you messed up the sorting, you can use the Move to unsorted operation.