ImageMagick – Free opensource tool to compile covert compose images

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

ImageMagick is ideal for manipulating images on the fly dynamically like from website interfaces or if you want to edit or modify multiple images at one go.

Features include

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 properties of an image

Composite: overlap one image over another

Montage: juxtapose image thumbnails on an image canvas

Motion picture: read and write the common image formats used in digital film work

Image calculator: apply a mathematical expression to an image or image channels

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

Large image: read, process, or write mega- and giga-pixel image sizes
Encipher or decipher an image: convert ordinary images into unintelligible gibberish and back again

Threads of execution: ImageMagick is thread safe and many internal algorithms are already threaded to take advantage of speed-ups offered by the dual and quad-core processor technologies.

To install ImageMagick on SUSE Linux and openSUSE, we need to compile from source.

Install the pre-requisites

In order to build from source, we need the GNU C compiler and the make utility.

opensuse11:~ # yast2 –install gcc make

Download Source

The latest source can be downloaded from here

opensuse11:~ # wget ftp://ftp.imagemagick.org/pub/ImageMagick/ImageMagick.tar.gz

Unzip & Untar

opensuse11:~ # tar -zxvf ImageMagick.tar.gz

Change Directory Configure & Compile

Change directory to the newly extracted directory and run the configure script then compile to install.

opensuse11:~ # cd ImageMagick

opensuse11:~/ImageMagick # ./configure

opensuse11:~/ImageMagick # make

Install ImageMagick

opensuse11:~/ImageMagick # make install

This should install ImageMagick on your openSUSE system (openSUSE 11.0 here)

To test the installation simply run the following command from the current directory from where you compiled and installed ImageMagick

opensuse11:~/ImageMagick # /usr/local/bin/convert logo: logo.gif

This creates a logo.gif file. To check the file

opensuse11:~/ImageMagick # identify logo.gif
logo.gif GIF 640×480 640×480+0+0 PseudoClass 256c 8-bit 37.4414kb

ImageMagick includes a number of command-line utilities for manipulating images:

animate – animate an image sequence on any X server.

compare – mathematically and visually annotate the difference between an image and its reconstruction.

composite – overlap one image over another.

conjure – interpret and execute scripts written in the Magick Scripting Language (MSL).

convert – convert between image formats as well as resize an image, blur, crop, despeckle, dither, draw on, flip, join, re-sample, and much more.

display – display an image or image sequence on any X server.

identify – describe the format and characteristics of one or more image files.

import – save any visible window on an X server and outputs it as an image file. You can capture a single window, the entire screen, or any rectangular portion of the screen.

mogrify – resize an image, blur, crop, despeckle, dither, draw on, flip, join, re-sample, and much more. Mogrify overwrites the original image file, whereas, convert writes to a different image file.

montage – create a composite image by combining several separate images. The images are tiled on the composite image optionally adorned with a border, frame, image name, and more.

stream – a lightweight tool to stream one or more pixel components of the image or portion of the image to your choice of storage formats. It writes the pixel components as they are read from the input image a row at a time making stream desirable when working with large images or when you require raw pixel components.

For more details and explanations, examples of using ImageMagick, click here