Convert, Edit, and Compose Images

ImageMagick^® is a software suite to create, edit, compose, or convert bitmap images. It can read and write images in a variety of formats (over 100) including DPX, EXR, GIF, JPEG, JPEG-2000, PDF, PNG, Postscript, SVG, and TIFF. Use ImageMagick to resize, flip, mirror, rotate, distort, shear and transform images, adjust image colors, apply various special effects, or draw text, lines, polygons, ellipses and Bézier curves.

The functionality of ImageMagick is typically utilized from the command line or you can use the features from programs written in your favorite language. Choose from these interfaces: G2F (Ada), MagickCore (C), MagickWand (C), ChMagick (Ch), ImageMagickObject (COM+), Magick++ (C++), JMagick (Java), L-Magick (Lisp), Lua, NMagick (Neko/haXe), Magick.NET (.NET), PascalMagick (Pascal), PerlMagick (Perl), MagickWand for PHP (PHP), IMagick (PHP), PythonMagick (Python), RMagick (Ruby), or TclMagick (Tcl/TK). With a language interface, use ImageMagick to modify or create images dynamically and automagically.

ImageMagick is free software delivered as a ready-to-run binary distribution or as source code that you may use, copy, modify, and distribute in both open and proprietary applications. It is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, approved by the OSI and recommended for use by the OSSCC.

The ImageMagick development process ensures a stable API and ABI. Before each ImageMagick release, we perform a comprehensive security assessment that includes memory error and thread data race detection to prevent security vulnerabilities.

The current release is ImageMagick 6.8.9-9 available from http://www.imagemagick.org/download. It runs on Linux, Windows, Mac Os X, iOS, Android OS, and others.

The authoritative ImageMagick web site is http://www.imagemagick.org.

Here are just a few examples of what ImageMagick can do:

• Format conversion: convert an image from one format to another (e.g. PNG to JPEG).
• Transform: resize, rotate, crop, flip or trim an image.
• Transparency: render portions of an image invisible.
• Draw: add shapes or text to an image.
• Decorate: add a border or frame to an image.
• Special effects: blur, sharpen, threshold, or tint an image.
• Animation: create a GIF animation sequence from a group of images.
• Text & comments: insert descriptive or artistic text in an image.
• Image identification: describe the format and attributes of an image.
• Composite: overlap one image over another.
• Montage: juxtapose image thumbnails on an image canvas.
• Generalized pixel distortion: correct for, or induce image distortions including perspective.
• Morphology of shapes: extract features, describe shapes, and recognize patterns in images.
• Delineate image features: Canny edge detection, mean-shift, Hough lines.
• Motion picture support: read and write the common image formats used in digital film work.
• Image calculator: apply a mathematical expression to an image or image channels.
• Connected component labeling: uniquely label connected regions in an image.
• Discrete Fourier transform: implements the forward and inverse DFT.
• Perceptual hash: map visually identical images to the same or similar hash-- useful in image retrieval, authentication, indexing, or copy detection as well as digital watermarking.
• Color management: accurate color management with color profiles or in lieu of-- built-in gamma compression or expansion as demanded by the colorspace.
• High dynamic-range images: accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from the brightest direct sunlight to the deepest darkest shadows.
• Encipher or decipher an image: convert ordinary images into unintelligible gibberish and back again.
• Virtual pixel support: convenient access to pixels outside the image region.
• Large image support: read, process, or write mega-, giga-, or tera-pixel image sizes.
• Threads of execution support: ImageMagick is thread safe and most internal algorithms execute in parallel to take advantage of speed-ups offered by multicore processor chips.
• Distributed pixel cache: offload intermediate pixel storage to one or more remote servers.
• Heterogeneous distributed processing: certain algorithms are OpenCL-enabled to take advantage of speed-ups offered by executing in concert across heterogeneous platforms consisting of CPUs, GPUs, and other processors.
• ImageMagick on the iPhone: convert, edit, or compose images on your iOS device such as the iPhone or iPad.

Examples of ImageMagick Usage shows how to use ImageMagick from the command-line to accomplish any of these tasks and much more. Also, see Fred's ImageMagick Scripts: a plethora of command-line scripts that perform geometric transforms, blurs, sharpens, edging, noise removal, and color manipulations.

The design of ImageMagick is an evolutionary process, with the design and implementation efforts serving to influence and guide further progress in the other. With ImageMagick version 7, we aim to improve the design based on lessons learned from the version 6 implementation. See the porting guide to track the progress of the version 7 development effort.

An open source project backed by years of continual development, ImageMagick supports about 100 image formats and can perform impressive operations such as creating images from scratch; changing colors; stretching, rotating, and overlaying images; and overlaying text on images. Whether you use ImageMagick to manage the family photos or to embark on a job involving millions of images, this book provides you with the knowledge to manage your images with ease.

The Definitive Guide to ImageMagick explains all of these capabilities and more in a practical, learn-by-example fashion. You'll get comfortable using ImageMagick for any image-processing task. Through the book's coverage of the ImageMagick interfaces for C, Perl, PHP, and Ruby, you'll learn how to incorporate ImageMagick features into a variety of applications.

ImageMagick Tricks by Sohail Salehi: This fast-paced and practical tutorial is packed with examples of photo manipulations, logo creation, animations, and complete web projects. With this book up your sleeve, you'll be creating spellbinding images from code in no time. The publisher, Packt, is donating a percentage of every book sold to the ImageMagick project.

To join the ImageMagick user community, try the discourse server. You can review questions or comments (with informed responses) posed by ImageMagick users or ask your own questions.