Surface-brightness distribution of IC 5181. The unsharp masked image, the continuum-band image with some I-band isophotal contours (ranging from 14.7 to 21.6 mag arcsec^-2 with an increment of 0.6 mag arcsec^-2), the continuum-free Hα+[N II] image with I-band isophotal contours (same levels as above), and the radial profiles of the surface brightness extracted along the major axis (solid line) and over a rectangular aperture with a width of 40″ parallel to the major axis and centered on the galactic nucleus (dashed line) are shown (from top to bottom). The orientation of the field of view is given in the top panel.