5 replies to this topic

[Murp-e]

<!-- m -->http://www.graphicsmagick.org/<!-- m -->

GraphicsMagick is the swiss army knife of image processing. Comprised of 248K physical lines (according to SLOCCount) of source code in the base package (or 891K including 3rd party libraries) it provides a robust and efficient collection of tools and libraries which support reading, writing, and manipulating an image in over 88 major formats including important formats like DPX, GIF, JPEG, JPEG-2000, PNG, PDF, PNM, and TIFF.

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GraphicsMagick is originally derived from ImageMagick 5.5.2 but has been completely independent of the ImageMagick project since then. Since the fork from ImageMagick in 2002, many improvements have been made (see news) by many authors using an open development model but without breaking the API or utilities operation.

Here are some reasons to prefer GraphicsMagick over ImageMagick:
[*:1rvewoqf]GM is much more efficient (see the benchmarks) so it gets the job done faster using fewer resources.
[*:1rvewoqf]GM is much smaller and tighter.
[*:1rvewoqf]GM is used to process billions of files at the world's largest photo sites.
[*:1rvewoqf]GM does not does not conflict with other installed software.
[*:1rvewoqf]GM suffers from fewer security issues and exploits.
[*:1rvewoqf]GM comes with a comprehensive manual page.
[*:1rvewoqf]GM provides API and ABI stability and managed releases that you can count on.
[*:1rvewoqf]GM provides detailed yet comprehensible ChangeLog and NEWS files.
[*:1rvewoqf]GM is available for free, and may be used to support both open and proprietary applications.
[*:1rvewoqf]GM is distributed under an X11-style license ("MIT License"), approved by the Open Source Initiative.
[*:1rvewoqf]GM developers contribute to other free projects for the public good.
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Here are just a few examples of what GraphicsMagick can do:
[*:1rvewoqf]Convert an image from one format to another (e.g. TIFF to JPEG)
[*:1rvewoqf]Resize, rotate, sharpen, color reduce, or add special effects to an image
[*:1rvewoqf]Create a montage of image thumbnails
[*:1rvewoqf]Create a transparent image suitable for use on the Web
[*:1rvewoqf]Turn a group of images into a GIF animation sequence
[*:1rvewoqf]Create a composite image by combining several separate images
[*:1rvewoqf]Draw shapes or text on an image
[*:1rvewoqf]Decorate an image with a border or frame
[*:1rvewoqf]Describe the format and characteristics of an image

It claims to be significantly faster than ImageMagick: GraphicsMagick 1.3.1 vs ImageMagick 6.4.5 Benchmark Report

I tried to install it but couldn't get it to work on my computer. It seems as though this package must be installed as opposed to ImageMagick which offers standalone command line tools which may easily be distributed together with AHK scripts.

I couldn't find any mention of this in the forums, has anyone tried using it with AHK?

[PhiLho]

Interesting, I didn't even know it existed! It is much less known than ImageMagick...
I just downloaded it (GraphicsMagick-1.3.5-Q16-windows-dll.exe), it is rougly 5MB where ImageMagick-6.4.1-5-Q16-windows-dll.exe (old copy of June 2008) is around 8.5MB.
It installed without problem on my Windows XP Pro SP3.
Installation folders are 14MB (GM) vs. 36 (IM). But they include 4MB of HTML pages (GM) vs. 14MB! And I installed slightly more stuff with IM, so I should substract 2 or 3MB (sample images, .lib files, Perl stuff...).
License of GM is slightly less restrictive than IM's one, but both allow commercial usage.

Both allow (only support...) command line operations. IM has an exe per command (stub/entry point, they have nearly all the same size) while GM has only one exe (named... GM) with the kind of command as first parameter.
I prefer the GM approach: less big (188KB) stubs contribute to reduced disk footprint, and reduce the risk of conflict: I have to provide full path to IM's convert because Windows has already such command in system32 ("Convert FAT volumes to NTFS", not something I do daily...).

[Murp-e]

PhiLho: Glad you liked it!

[willyfoo]

Seems like I can fairly easily make ImageMagick portable but not GraphicsMagick.. I would have to install GM in each system to use it.. am I mistaken here? Is there any way to run GM without installing it?

[PhiLho]

I haven't tried, but I often find that after installation, you can just pick up the files in the installation folder and copy them elsewhere. At worst, you loose Explorer integration or similar features.
GM is a command line utility, so there are good chances that by just putting its folder in the path, it can run in a portable way.
Unless it does some tricks with the registry...