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<p id="magick">Ruby+ImageMagick<span class="tm">TM</span><br />
Ruby+GraphicsMagick<br />
Version 1.15.3</p>
<h1>User's Guide and Reference</h1>
<h2>Table of Contents</h2>
<div id="toc">
<ul>
<li><a href="#introduction">Introduction</a></li>
<li>User's Guide</li>
<li style="list-style: none">
<ul>
<li><a href="usage.html">How to Use RMagick</a></li>
<li><a href="imusage.html">ImageMagick and GraphicsMagick
Conventions</a></li>
<li><a href="optequiv.html">Magick Command Options and
Their Equivalent Methods</a></li>
<li><a href="comtasks.html">Common Tasks</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Reference</li>
<li style="list-style: none">
<ul>
<li>Modules</li>
<li style="list-style: none">
<ul>
<li><a href="magick.html">Magick</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Classes</li>
<li style="list-style: none">
<ul>
<li><a href="ilist.html">ImageList</a></li>
<li><a href="imageattrs.html">Image (attribute
methods)</a></li>
<li><a href="image1.html">Image (class and instance
methods, part 1)</a></li>
<li><a href="image2.html">Image (instance methods,
part 2)</a></li>
<li><a href="image3.html">Image (instance methods,
part 3)</a></li>
<li><a href="draw.html">Draw</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<a href="struct.html">Miscellaneous classes</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="struct.html#view">Image::View</a></li>
<li><a href="struct.html#Geometry">Geometry</a></li>
<li><a href="struct.html#Pixel">Pixel</a></li>
<li><a href="struct.html#struct">Struct
classes</a></li>
<li><a href="struct.html#fill">Fill classes</a></li>
<li><a href="struct.html#exception">Exception
classes</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="info.html">Image::Info - Optional method
arguments</a></li>
<li><a href="constants.html">Constants</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>RVG - Ruby Vector Graphics</li>
<li style="list-style:none">
<ul>
<li><a href="rvgtut.html">Drawing with RVG: A
tutorial</a></li>
<li>RVG Reference
<ul>
<li><a href="rvg.html">class RVG</a></li>
<li><a href="rvggroup.html">class RVG::Group</a></li>
<li><a href="rvgimage.html">class RVG::Image</a></li>
<li><a href="rvgpattern.html">class
RVG::Pattern</a></li>
<li><a href="rvgclip.html">class
RVG::ClipPath</a></li>
<li><a href="rvgtext.html">class RVG::Text</a></li>
<li><a href="rvgtspan.html">class RVG::Tspan</a></li>
<li><a href="rvguse.html">class RVG::Use</a></li>
<li><a href="rvgstyle.html">The styles
method</a></li>
<li><a href="rvgshape.html">The shapes
methods</a></li>
<li><a href="rvgxform.html">The transform
methods</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<h2 id="introduction">Introduction</h2>
<h3>What is RMagick?</h3>
<p>RMagick is a binding from Ruby to the ImageMagick <span class=
"tm">TM</span> and GraphicsMagick image manipulation libraries.
Here's how the <a href=
"http://www.imagemagick.org/index.html">ImageMagick home page</a>
describes ImageMagick:</p>
<div class="imquote">
<p>ImageMagick<span style=
"font-size: x-small; vertical-align: super">TM</span>... is a
free software suite to create, edit, and compose bitmap images.
It can read, convert and write images in a large variety of
formats. Images can be cropped, colors can be changed, various
effects can be applied, images can be rotated and combined, and
text, lines, polygons, ellipses and Bézier curves can be
added to images and stretched and rotated.</p>
</div>
<p>GraphicsMagick is a branch from ImageMagick 5.5.2 and provides
a nearly identical API. The <a href=
"http://www.graphicsmagick.org">GraphicsMagick web site</a> says
this about GraphicsMagick:</p>
<div class="imquote">
<p><em>GraphicsMagick</em> is the swiss army knife of image
processing. It provides a robust 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, SVG, and TIFF.
GraphicsMagick supports huge images on systems that support
large files, and has been tested with gigapixel-size images.
GraphicsMagick can create new images on the fly, making it
suitable for building dynamic Web applications. GraphicsMagick
may be used to resize, rotate, sharpen, color reduce, or add
special effects to an image and save the result in the same or
differing image format</p>
</div>
<p>Both libraries offer a full range of image processing tools
that provide the capability to:</p>
<div class="imquote">
<ul>
<li>Convert an image from one format to another (e.g. TIFF to
JPEG)</li>
<li>Resize, rotate, sharpen, color reduce, or add special
effects to an image</li>
<li>Create a montage of image thumbnails</li>
<li>Create a transparent image suitable for use on the
Web</li>
<li>Turn a group of images into a GIF animation sequence</li>
<li>Create a composite image by combining several separate
images</li>
<li>Draw shapes or text on an image</li>
<li>Decorate an image with a border or frame</li>
<li>Describe the format and characteristics of an image</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p>RMagick is a complete interface to ImageMagick and
GraphicsMagick. Version 1.0.0 was released in February, 2003.
Within its four major classes and 30 minor classes RMagick
defines over 600 methods and 225 constants. RMagick exploits Ruby
idioms such as blocks and iterators, Struct classes, symbols, ?-
and !-suffixed methods, and exceptions.</p>
<h3>About this document</h3>
<p>This document describes Version 1.15.3 of RMagick.
It is divided into 4 parts. The first is this page. The second
part is a user's guide covering both RMagick and
ImageMagick/GraphicsMagick usage and conventions. The third part
is a reference guide to the ImageList, Image, and Draw classes.
This guide includes many examples.</p>
<p>The fourth part covers Ruby Vector Graphics (RVG). RVG is a
facade for Draw that provides a high-level API for scalable
vector graphics. The RVG section includes a tutorial and complete
reference documentation.</p>
<p>Accompanying the HTML documentation is a set of over 175
example RMagick programs. Each is a complete, stand-alone program
that either creates an image from scratch or modifies an input
image using one or more RMagick methods. The output images are
used as illustrations in the HTML documentation. Throughout this
document, click any example image to see the program that created
it.</p>
<h4>Conventions</h4>
<p><b>Names </b>I've tried to follow existing Ruby
conventions in this document. A class is identified by its name,
which always starts with a capital letter. An object is referred
to by its class name, starting with a small letter. For example,
a generic ImageList object is referred to as an
<em>imagelist</em>. In the Reference section, when a method
signature identifies the type of an argument or return value, the
type is shown by preceding the class name by "a" or "an". For
example, <code>anImage</code> refers to an Image object, and
<code>anImageList</code> refers to an ImageList object. Class
methods are identified like this: <code>Class.method</code>.
Instance methods are identified like this:
<code>Class#method</code>.</p>
<p>RMagick is implemented in the <b>Magick</b> module, therefore
its constants are in the Magick namespace. However, for clarity
I've omitted the <code>Magick::</code> prefix in most places in
this document. You can use the <code>include Magick</code>
statement to add the constants and methods to the Object
namespace.</p>
<p><b>References to ImageMagick and GraphicsMagick</b>
GraphicsMagick is a fork of ImageMagick and shares most of
its APIs. When describing a feature, API, convention, component,
or other element that is shared by both, I use the string
<b>×Magick</b>. For example, "×Magick supports over
89 major image formats" means that both ImageMagick and
GraphicsMagick support over 89 formats.</p>
<p><b>×Magick documentation </b><span class=
"imquote">Text that looks like this</span> is quoted from the
×Magick documentation.</p>
<p><b>Example programs and images </b> All of the
example images on these pages were created by RMagick. Click the
image to see the progam code. (You may need to configure your
browser to allow JavaScript and popup windows.) All example
images show the result of applying the method. Many example
images show the "before" image as well. When the image is
accompanied by this symbol <img style="display:inline" src=
"ex/images/spin.gif" alt="rollover" /> mouse over the image to
see the "before" version.</p>
<h3>How to get help</h3>
<p>If you have a question that is not answered by these pages,
you can post it at the <a href=
"http://rubyforge.org/projects/rmagick">Support Request
Tracker</a> or the <a href=
"http://rubyforge.org/projects/rmagick">Feature Request
Tracker</a> on RubyForge, or email me at <code>rmagick at
rubyforge.org</code>.</p>
<h3><a name="bugs" id="bugs">Reporting bugs</a></h3>
<p>Please report problems with RMagick installation and usage to
the <a href="http://rubyforge.org/projects/rmagick/">Bug
Tracker</a> at RubyForge, or email me at <code>rmagick at
rubyforge.org</code>.</p>
<p>For quickest results, include the RMagick, ×Magick and
Ruby version numbers, along with a thorough description of the
problem. RMagick will tell you both its version number and
×Magick's version number. Simply bring up irb and run this
command: <code>ruby -r RMagick -e "puts
Magick::Long_version"</code></p>
<pre class="example" id="version">
This is RMagick 1.15.0 ($Date: 2007/01/14 19:01:40 $) Copyright (C) 2007 by Timothy P. Hunter
Built with ImageMagick 6.3.1 01/13/07 Q16 http://www.imagemagick.org
Built for ruby 1.8.5 (2006-08-25) [i686-linux]
Web page: http://rmagick.rubyforge.org
Email: rmagick@rubyforge.org
</pre>
<p>It will help a lot if you supply a small Ruby program that
reproduces the problem. (Don't forget to include any input image
files!).</p>
<p>Please remember I can't help with Ruby or ×Magick
installation and configuration problems. For help with Ruby, post
your questions to <code>comp.lang.ruby</code>. For help with
ImageMagick or GraphicsMagick, join the ImageMagick or
GraphicsMagick mailing list. See the instructions at <a href=
"http://www.imagemagick.org/script/mailing-list.php">http://www.imagemagick.org/script/mailing-list.php</a>
or <a href=
"http://sourceforge.net/projects/graphicsmagick/">http://sourceforge.net/projects/graphicsmagick/</a>.</p>
<p>I'm not an image processing guru, either, so I probably won't
be able to help with questions about specific image formats and
transformations. I will be glad, however, to translate between
the RMagick API and the ×Magick C API to help you compose a
question to the ×Magick developers.</p>
<h3>Contributions</h3>
<p>If you have a script or an image using RMagick that you're
particularly proud of, let me know. I'd like to collect your
contributions, along with other users' contributions, and put
them in a <code>contrib</code> directory to distribute with
RMagick. I'm particularly interested in getting examples for the
RMagick methods that currently have no examples.</p>
<h3><a name="copyrights" id="copyrights">Copyright
Notices</a></h3>
<ul>
<li>RMagick © 2002-2007 Timothy P. Hunter.</li>
<li>ImageMagick © 1999-2007 ImageMagick Studio.</li>
<li>GraphicsMagick © 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 GraphicsMagick
Group.</li>
<li>Ruby is copyrighted free software by Yukihiro
Matsumoto.</li>
</ul>
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