The mkfake command creates a high-content screen for testing. The image data will be meaningless, but it allows testing of screen, plate, and well metadata without having to find appropriately-sized screens from real acquisitions.
If no arguments are specified, mkfake prints usage information.
To create a single screen with default plate dimensions:
mkfake default-screen.fake
This will create a directory that represents one screen with a single plate containing one well, one field, and one acquisition of the plate (see PlateAcquisition).
To change the number of plates in the screen:
mkfake -plates 3 three-plates.fake
To change the number of acquisitions for each plate:
mkfake -runs 4 four-plate-acquisitions.fake
To change the number of rows of wells in each plate:
mkfake -rows 8 eight-row-plate.fake
To change the number of columns of wells in each plate:
mkfake -columns 12 twelve-column-plate.fake
To change the number of fields per well:
mkfake -fields 2 two-field-plate.fake
It is often most useful to use the arguments together to create a realistic screen, for example:
mkfake -rows 16 -columns 24 -plates 2 -fields 3 two-384-well-plates.fake
As with other command line tools, debugging output can be enabled if necessary:
mkfake -debug debug-screen.fake