This archived electron micrograph is a sample of the old school style of morphometry. Here is a ferret alveolar type II cell which, when printed, was overlain with a scored plexiglass grid during photographic exposure, to make it easy to count intersection-crossings to determine the volume density of organelles, such as mitochondria, lamellar bodies, RER profiles, and also to count intersections of linea profiles for organelles like RER and plasma membrane and nuclear membrane.  You can see in this very old sample that I circled the nuclear pores.  Cross marks at intersections counted are still visible (ink lines).  Though this is seemingly primitive, to me it allowed much more precision that using image processing, since the eye can adjust to differences in light and darkness in the prints, and pick up debris and other extraneous junk and scratches that might just be counted as “objects” in computer vision programs.  Besides being more flexible, probably more accurate (my opinion of course) it is also quick, and does provide a “hard copy” to go back and verify and spot check one’s data (which counting on a computer doesn’t always do. Even more importantly, not all information that is desired is known at the time of sampling, and therefore having a resource to check back with is invaluable.