What is ImageMagick

  ImageMagick TM, version 4.2.9, is a robust collection of tools and libraries to read, write, and manipulate an image in any of the more popular image formats including GIF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, and Photo CD. With ImageMagick you can create GIFs dynamically making it suitable for Web applications.
  You can also resize, rotate, sharpen, color reduce, or add special effects to an image and save your completed work in the same or differing image format.
  Here are just a few examples of what ImageMagick can do:
    Convert an image from one format to another (e.g. TIFF to JPEG)
    Resize, rotate, sharpen, color reduce, or add special effects to an image
    Create a montage of image tumbnails
    Create a transparent image suitable for use on the Web
    Turn a group of images into a GIF animation sequence
    Create a composite image by combining several separate images
    Draw shapes or text on an image
    Decorate an image with a border or frame
    Describe the format and characteristics of an image

  You can access ImageMagick functions directly from the command line using the ImageMagick tools convert, mogrify, montage, combine, or identify. Use the display program to interactively manipulate your images or animate an image sequence from a graphical panel. Finally you have access to the various image processing methods directly from your favorite application development environment: Perl, C++, C, or Java. These programs and much more are explained by following the links from this page or read the ImageMagick Users Guide.

  ImageMagick is known to compile and run on virtually any Unix. system and Linux. It also runs under Windows NT, Windows 95, Macintosh, VMS, and OS2. See the install guide for compiling instructions. Pre-compiled binaries are available for some of the more popular operating systems. The entire source and binary distribution is also available for a limited time on CD.

  Developers will probably be interested in the latest source from the ImageMagick anonymous CVS server.

  You can subscribe to the mailing list. Here you can ask questions and get advice from other ImageMagick users and see announcements of bug fixes, enhancements, and new releases.

  Although the software is copyrighted, it is available for free and can be redistributed without fee.

  Because ImageMagick is freeware, I am unwilling to certify that it is Y2K Compliant. However I am confident that it is. ImageMagick uses `localtime` to produce time-stamps for encoding PDF and Postscript output. It also uses system routines such as `select` to produce suitable sub-second delays when animating an image sequence.

How Can I Find Out More About ImageMagick

  For detailed information about the ImageMagick command line utilities, select from these sources:
    ImageMagick Tools
    Frequently Asked Questions
    Magick Image File Format
    ImageMagick's color reduction algorithm
    What's New
    How You Can Help
  Get the ImageMagick source or binary distributions from here:
    ImageMagick Download Sites
    Concurrent Version System
  You can access ImageMagick capabilities from a number of application interfaces:
    Magick Application Programming Interface
    Object-oriented Perl Interface to ImageMagick
    Object-oriented C++ Interface to ImageMagick
    Object-oriented Python Interface to ImageMagick
    Object-oriented Java Interface to ImageMagick
  Here are a few miscellaneous uses of ImageMagick:
    Common Desktop Environment Screen Saver
    Motif GUI for Animate
    3-D Web Screamers

Related Sites

  Here is a list of ImageMagick related sites that you might want to visit:
    ImageMagick Studio
    WebMagick Image Navigator
    The Bitmap Information Tool
    Tripod's Banner Builder
    The Banner Generator
    Microsoft Vision SDK
    Anthony's Icon Library
    Equinox

Image manipulation software that works like magic.