Introduction

As images have become an integral part of the web, the need for image processing becomes ever-present. There are various libraries and binaries that are used for image processing in Node.js, two of which are GraphicsMagick and ImageMagick.

ImageMagick is an open-source image processing software for creating, modifying, and conversion of images. GraphicsMagick is a similar tool that was originally a fork of the ImageMagick project that has become an independent project of its own with several improvements.

Some of the advantages GraphicsMagick has over ImageMagick include more efficiency, a smaller size, fewer security exploits and is generally more stable than ImageMagick. They are both available for use in Node.js as NPM packages:  GraphicsMagick and  ImageMagick.

Installing GraphicsMagick and ImageMagick

Before installing either of these packages, you have to download and install the command-line interface (CLI) tools on your system. You can also use ImageMagick directly from GraphicsMagick.

If you plan to use the GraphicsMagick module, you can either install the  ImageMagick or GraphicsMagick CLI tools. If instead, you want to use ImageMagick, you need to install the  ImageMagick CLI tool.

After downloading and installing the required CLI tool, you can check the version of your installation by running the following commands on your terminal.

#nodejs #graphicsmagick #imagemagick #images