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What is the actual difference between the GraphicsMagick and the ImageMagick libraries (source to compare list or article needed)?

apaderno
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Y.N
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    The two forked from an initially common code base years ago. Many commands and parameters are pretty similar but they have diverged considerably. To my mind, ImageMagick is the more flexible and powerful nowadays. I often see suggestions that GraphicsMagick is faster but I have not seen any evidence that might be true. Obviously YMMV. – Mark Setchell Sep 17 '15 at 07:26
  • So, no precise compare sheet is available? – Y.N Sep 17 '15 at 07:36
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    AFAIK, no. One major difference is that IM supports parenthesised *"aside processing"* which is immensely powerful, in my view. Others may have other opinions, but that's my 2 pence:-) – Mark Setchell Sep 17 '15 at 08:23
  • Some anecdote that GraphicsMagick is faster: https://coderwall.com/p/1l7h-a/imagemagick-bloat-graphicsmagick – pts Dec 02 '16 at 06:49
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    Sadly, seems like this is a very difficult request. "We now find that a simple head to head performance comparison between GraphicsMagick and recent ImageMagick is no longer possible because ImageMagick has changed the meanings of the existing arguments." http://www.graphicsmagick.org/benchmarks.html – Jesse Adelman May 06 '17 at 18:04
  • I think we shouldn't trust to 'A against B' or 'B against A' self words. May be some independent view? – Y.N May 06 '17 at 21:05
  • GraphicsMagick is better than ImageMagick, according to this independent article on HackerNews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12824050 – mvp Nov 14 '17 at 01:51
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    I've been using ImageMagick for years. What the heck is GraphicsMagick? :-( – Parapluie May 23 '18 at 16:05
  • @Parapluie http://www.graphicsmagick.org/FAQ.html#how-does-graphicsmagick-differ-from-imagemagick – Y.N May 25 '18 at 19:51
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    Possible duplicate of [What is the difference between ImageMagick and GraphicsMagick?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/862051/what-is-the-difference-between-imagemagick-and-graphicsmagick) – Ganton Mar 02 '19 at 13:46
  • I dunno, but I just tried to run "identify" on a large PDF file... GraphicsMagick claims it ran out of disk space *writing* (WTF!?) and gives up despite no apparent change in disk usage, while ImageMagick processes it with no problem! – Michael Sep 24 '19 at 16:26

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The GraphicsMagick homepage has a list of differences. But it might be a bit biased. In general, GraphicsMagick seems to be faster (see e.g. this article), with a more stable API and less bugs. Many big websites uses it instead of ImageMagick.

Frank Buss
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    But the biggest thing is that GM is not as feature complete. Basic stuff like line-height of text is completely missing ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ – Matt Fletcher Sep 03 '19 at 08:53
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    This is really not a comparison at all, but a marketing wank list. Akin to "without mercury" on a bag of cereals. – misiu_mp Nov 03 '19 at 13:35
  • Can I use both ? – MaXi32 May 17 '20 at 16:35
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    @MaXi32 A bit late to the party, but yes you can: GM has its own main command `gm` and all the IM comamnds are provides as a command parameter to `gm`. So both tool can exist happily next to each other. – halloleo Oct 15 '20 at 05:22