GD library is an open source code library for the creation of images dynamically by the programmers. It can create many types of images which includes formats like PNG, JPEG, GIF and WBMP. In general GD is used to create charts, thumbnails, graphics and many more.

GD is designed in ANSI C programming language, however it can interface with many other programming language. This software is a developed by Thomas Boutell .It originally was designed for GIF draws, however since the revoking of Unisys license it stood for “Graphics draw “in general.

It is a very easy to use software and can be used for variety of graphics functions such as lines, arcs, text (using selected fonts), creating the images with other images and multiple colors. The latest versions support for truecolor images, alpha channels, and resampling as well and it also support various other features.

As stated earlier it is created in ANSI C language and it supports languages such as C, PHP, Perl, Python, OCml, Tcl, Pascal, GNU Octave, REXX, and Ruby.  It has an added tool “Fly” command line interpreter which allows image creation using GD. This helps in writing  scripts in any language and run it using Fly

Mostly GD is used with PHP, and it has moved to libgd.org.

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Websites being completely flooded by images there exist a need for such a support.

ImageMagick is a software suite which allows a user to create edit and compose the bitmap images. It also allows to convert images to various other formats(more than 100) which includes DPX, EXR, GIF, JPEG, JPEG-2000, PDF, PhotoCD, PNG, Postscript, SVG, and TIFF. You can write, read,translate, flip, mirror, rotate, scale, shear, color formatting, special effects etc.

You can utilize the functionality of the ImageMagick from command line as it does not have GUI based interface to edit images. You can use it through code written in your hands on language.

You all would be happy to hear that this software is totally free with all its features and it is also Open source.It is ready to run binary distribution. It is licensed under GPL, ImageMagick License and BSD-Style license. It also supports all widely used Operating System.

This software is used by number of other programs to create image thumbnails such as MediaWiki, phpBB, vBulletin.

ImageMagick use a fully integrated API called PerlMagick..

Should we see some of its features.

File Format Conversion: It converts image from one format to other.

Transform: Resizes the images, rotates it, crop, flip or trim an image.

Draw: It adds shapes to the image and text also.

Decorate: It adds border or frame  to the image

Special effects: It adds special effects such as blur, sharpen, threshold, or tint an image.

Animation: It helps to create a sequence from a group of images, animate a image.

Text and comment: It helps to add a descriptive or artistic text in an image.

Image identification: It describes the format and properties of an image.

Composite: It allows to overlap one image over another.

Montage: Image thumbnails on an image canvas.

Motion Picture support: It reads and writes the common image formats used in digital film works.

Image calculator: user can apply a mathematical expression to an image.

DFT: It Discrete Fourier Transform which is implemented in forward and reverse.

High range dynamic Images: It accurately represent the variety of real scenes ranging from the brightest to the deepest.

Virtual pixel support: It allows a good access to pixel outside the image region

Many more…

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