Attention
The ShARC HPC cluster was decommissioned on the 30th of November 2023 at 17:00. It is no longer possible for users to access that cluster.
ImageMagick
ImageMagick is a collection of tools for creating, editing, viewing, composing and converting images. Many bitmap and vector-based file formats are supported.
ImageMagick is installed on the cluster’s worker nodes. It provides a number of command-line programs plus an API for programmatic control.
Command-line usage
Some of the some of the most useful included command-line programs are:
display
Display an image stored in a file:
display winterview.jpg
display -resize 800x600 winterview.jpg
Display a series of files as a slide show:
display -delay 2 *.jpg
convert
Convert an image from one format to another e.g.
convert -format tiff pic1.jpg pic1.tiff
To capture from screen to a file:
convert -format jpeg X: newpicture.jpg
animate
Create an animation effect from a set of files containing snap-shots:
animate pic1.tiff pic2.tiff pic3.tiff pic4.tiff pic5.tiff
Create an animated-gif from a series of gif files (mypics*.gif):
convert -delay 40 -loop 0 mypics*.gif myanimated.gif
Note that non-gif files should first be converted:
convert -format gif mypic1.jpg mypic1.gif
identify
View image metadata:
identify parkwood.jpg
More detailed information:
identify -verbose parkwood.jpg
More information on on these and other provided command-line tools (compare, composite, conjure, import, mogrify, montage and stream) can be found in the official ImageMagick 6 documentation.
Programmatic access (API)
There are ImageMagick APIs for most common programming languages, allowing you to script/automate your image manipulation using C++, Ruby, Perl, Python etc.
A list of ImageMagick APIs can be found on the ImageMagick 6 site. This list may not be comprehensive.
Installation notes
Version 6.7.8.9-15
This was installed on the worker nodes using the operating system’s package manager (i.e. the RPM for Centos 7.x is installed).