If you’re looking for a free, open-source image/photo manipulation software that gets the job done minus the frills, you might want to give ImageMagick a try. ImageMagick is a straight forward bitmap creation tool that also lets you edit and manipulate other image formats.
ImageMagick - What It Is and What It Does?
ImageMagick is not your typical image/photo editor for the simple reason that it is primarily intended for composing bitmap images. But it can read and supports various image file formats including JPEG, JPEG-2000, PDF, PhotoCD, PNG, Postcript, SVG, and TIFF.
ImageMagick allows you to translate, flip, mirror, rotate, scale, shear, and transform images. You can also adjust image colors, apply various special effects or draw test, lines, polygons, ellipses and Bezier curves. The nice thing about ImageMagick is the fact that it lets you do all those things just by selecting those options from the command line. By simply selecting any of the options, the software will carry out the command. No need to memorize short cut keys or any key combos to carry out specific task. Hence, ImageMagick allows you to edit images fast.
ImageMagick - Features
Undoubtedly, ImageMagick is a feature-rich software suite. It may not be as powerful and as colorful as Adobe Photoshop and other photo/image editing software but it certainly does the job effectively and efficiently.
Specifically ImageMagick lets you:
- transform images by resizing, rotating, cropping, flipping or trimming
- make portions of an image invisible
- add shapes or text to an image
- add border or frame to an image
- blur, sharpen, apply threshold, or tint an image
- create GIF animation sequence
- insert descriptive or artistic text in an image
- describe the format and properties of an image
- overlap an image over another image
- juxtapose image thumbnails on an image canvas
- apply mathematical expression to an image or image channels
- convert ordinary images into unintelligible gibberish
- and more
ImageMagick - Our Verdict (4 out of 5)
ImageMagick may seem pretty weird at first, especially if you are a long time Windows Image Editor or Adobe Photoshop user. But through constant use and practice, you’ll learn the ins and outs of the software and learn to use it as if were your Adobe Photoshop or Windows Image Editor.
ImageMagick is not for everyone though. Its interface is not as intuitive as Adobe Photoshop. It’s a straightforward image editing software that lets you work on your images quickly. It’s a good alternative to Adobe Photoshop and other major photo/image editing software. But it may not be a viable replacement.
