ImageMagick
ImageMagick, version 3.7.2, is a package for display and interactive manipulation of images for the X Window System. It is written in C and interfaces to the X library, and therefore does not require any proprietary toolkit in order to compile. Although the software is copyrighted, it is available for free and can be redistributed without fee.

The ImageMagick image display tool first determines the hardware capabilities of your workstation. If the number of unique colors in an image is less than or equal to the number the workstation can support, the image is displayed in an X window. Otherwise, the number of colors in the image is first reduced to match the color resolution of the workstation before it is displayed.

In addition to the image display program, ImageMagick also has command line programs that perform these functions:

* Describe the format and characteristics of an image
* Convert an image from one format to another
* Transform an image or sequence of images
* Read an image from an X server and output it as an image file
* Animate a sequence of images
* Combine one or more images to create new images
* Create a composite image by combining several separate images
* Segment an image based on the color histogram
* Retrieve, list, or print files from a remote network site
You can try these and many more functions over the Internet from the Imaging Machine . Or, you can see examples of select ImageMagick functions.

ImageMagick supports many of the more popular image formats including JPEG, PNG, TIFF, Photo CD, etc.

ImageMagick is known to compile and run on virtually any Unix system and Linux. It also runs under VMS. See README for compiling instructions.

What's New

ImageMagick is continually being enhanced. Check this section periodically to see what enhancements have been added. See Changelog for past enhancements and bug fixes.
* Join the ImageMagick mailing list. Send subscribe magick to majordomo@wizards.dupont.com.
* There is a limited capability version of ImageMagick for the Macintosh.
* ImageMagick is now fully ANSI C compliant and will compile with any C++ compiler. K & R compilers will no longer compile ImageMagick.
* You can now compile ImageMagick on Posix systems without the X11 libraries. Use the X11 Stubs libraries instead.
* You can now make an animated GIF loop within Netscape 2.0. For further details see GIF Animation.
* The new option -adjoin concatenates information found in multiple input image files and writes it to a single multi-image file.
* Use convert to create MPEG images.
* All LZW compression has been removed because it is subject to licensing and is not freely distributable. See Frequently Asked Questions for details.

Other Information Sources

* ImageMagick Tools
* Frequently Asked Questions
* Magick Image File Format
* ImageMagick's color reduction algorithm
* Home Page of Muhammad A Muquit

cristy@dupont.com