{"slug": "imagemagick", "name": "ImageMagick", "category": "media", "category_name": "Media and creative", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 16, "warners": 5, "score": 0.596, "rising": 0.02, "first": "2025-12-22", "latest": "2026-10-17", "why": "I love ImageMagick. I've used it a few times to make a PDF look scanned.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 7, "compare": 0, "warn": 5}, "spark": [0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I love ImageMagick. I've used it a few times to make a PDF look scanned.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://imagemagick.org", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["ImageMagick"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 795060032, "item_id": 49691252, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49691252", "by": "Suppafly", "date": "2026-09-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used to make little meme generators with imagemagick before those were a thing", "excerpt": "I used to make little meme generators with imagemagick before those were a thing, wish I had thought to make a job of it.", "context": "", "use_case": "meme generators", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple iPod Engraver (2019)"}, {"id": 770850369, "item_id": 48178148, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48178148", "by": "Hard_Space", "date": "2026-05-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have devolved a lot of tedious Photoshop work to scripts and routines", "excerpt": "I need Photoshop for an almost vanishingly small subset of all the things it is capable of, and this holds true for nearly all 'full-fledged' software that I use. So what may not be surfacing, in the absence of vibe-coded Photoshops, is the growing local script collections of many users. Since I have had AI to knock up Python scripts and workflows incorporating local ImageMagick and FFMPEG, I have devolved a lot of t", "context": "", "use_case": "scripted image processing", "switched_from": "Photoshop", "story": "Where Are the Vibecoded Photoshops?"}, {"id": 745122320, "item_id": 46570145, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46570145", "by": "1a527dd5", "date": "2026-01-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love ImageMagick. I've used it a few times to make a PDF look scanned.", "excerpt": "I love ImageMagick. I've used it a few times to make a PDF look scanned. convert -density 90 input.pdf -rotate 0.5 -attenuate 0.2 +noise Multiplicative -colorspace Gray output.pdf", "context": "", "use_case": "making PDFs look scanned", "switched_from": "", "story": "Creating Embroidered Charts with R and ImageMagick"}, {"id": 741782928, "item_id": 46361433, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46361433", "by": "linkregister", "date": "2025-12-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Conversions on the command line are simple enough with imagemagick.", "excerpt": "I save my iPhone photos to my linux desktop. The default image viewing software in the Gnome 3 window manager can display HEIC images. Conversions on the command line are simple enough with imagemagick. Prior to conversion, I use exiftool to rename the files from IMG_0123.HEIC to the date the image or video was taken, followed by a truncated sha256 digest of the file, e.g. 2025-12-22-1732-f8b7302.HEIC. Otherwise, you", "context": "Linux desktop user", "use_case": "HEIC to JPG conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How are most people converting HEIC to jpg?"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 796009634, "item_id": 49750602, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49750602", "by": "sams99", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "We are also in the process of moving away from Magick to Vips", "excerpt": "Update on the Discourse side, we now run all external binaries, including magick via a landlock sandbox. The gem we use is here: https://github.com/discourse/ruby-landlock highly recommend all Rubyists out there consider this. We are also in the process of moving away from Magick to Vips (which also runs in a sandbox, not in process) HEIF is patched, but I doubt this is the last buffer overflow in HEIF, I will not be", "context": "", "use_case": "image processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "A heap overflow and SSO misconfiguration to compromise OpenAI internal repos"}, {"id": 796006930, "item_id": 49750433, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49750433", "by": "nikcub", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "there have been tons of bugs in ffmpeg and imagemagick and the core libs", "excerpt": "Reading the patch[0] for libheif the bug which lead to the vuln was around bounds checking for image overlays. the container can have multiple images and you can compose them in the output. heif also supports rotating, cropping, alpha channels, thumbnails and a ton of other features that a web forum where a user is uploading photos or screenshots doesn't need. It's a much, much larger attack surface than plain old sc", "context": "", "use_case": "image processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "A heap overflow and SSO misconfiguration to compromise OpenAI internal repos"}, {"id": 796001872, "item_id": 49750117, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49750117", "by": "oefrha", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Unsandboxed ImageMagick is known for being a security nightmare", "excerpt": "Unsandboxed ImageMagick is known for being a security nightmare even back when PHP ruled the world (not saying sandboxing is a panacea either, it just requires a different and potentially harder exploit to develop a full chain). Difference is it's easier than ever to turn vulnerabilities into full compromises. At some point we'll have to replace all parsers with something at least as safe as https://github.com/google", "context": "", "use_case": "image processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "A heap overflow and SSO misconfiguration to compromise OpenAI internal repos"}, {"id": 792628497, "item_id": 49539281, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539281", "by": "Helmut10001", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "warn", "quote": "ImageMagick uses 20GB RAM per Nikon RAW file (this triggered the Linux OOM-killer)", "excerpt": "I love immich! On board since June 2026. But, here's a brief report on my evening installation project.. setting up Immich: Ingesting a 1.7TB library (160k+ RAW photos) is apparently not a standard task! - Thumbnails and ML vectors consumed hundreds of gigabytes. I had to move the library folder to a dedicated ZFS HDD (700GB currently). - ImageMagick uses 20GB RAM per Nikon RAW file (this triggered the Linux OOM-kill", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW thumbnail processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}]}], "who": [{"by": "aorth", "context": "Java application developer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50128546", "date": "2026-10-17"}, {"by": "kvgr", "context": "building a photo framing app", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47307949", "date": "2026-03-09"}, {"by": "linkregister", "context": "Linux desktop user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46361433", "date": "2025-12-22"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["image processing", "making pdfs look scanned", "image processing in java app", "meme generators", "raw thumbnail processing", "image conversion"], "compared": [{"slug": "libvips", "name": "libvips", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "playwright-mcp", "name": "Playwright MCP", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "ffmpeg", "name": "ffmpeg", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "adobe-photoshop", "name": "Adobe Photoshop", "co": 1, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "ruby-landlock", "name": "ruby-landlock", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49749656", "title": "A heap overflow and SSO misconfiguration to compromise OpenAI internal repos", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50120224", "title": "JPEG XL vs. AVIF for web use-cases", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49619848", "title": "Apple iPod Engraver (2019)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49538375", "title": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49088479", "title": "Show HN: Palette Manipulator", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49148884", "title": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 3}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-09": {"warn": 4, "recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 802056736, "item_id": 50128546, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50128546", "by": "aorth", "date": "2026-10-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I have a Java application that relies on ImageMagick, which seems to use libheif for AVIF rather than libavif (avifenc).", "excerpt": "Impressive. How can we use AVIF from Java? I have a Java application that relies on ImageMagick, which seems to use libheif for AVIF rather than libavif (avifenc).", "context": "Java application developer", "use_case": "image processing in Java app", "switched_from": "", "story": "JPEG XL vs. AVIF for web use-cases"}, {"id": 796009634, "item_id": 49750602, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49750602", "by": "sams99", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "We are also in the process of moving away from Magick to Vips", "excerpt": "Update on the Discourse side, we now run all external binaries, including magick via a landlock sandbox. The gem we use is here: https://github.com/discourse/ruby-landlock highly recommend all Rubyists out there consider this. We are also in the process of moving away from Magick to Vips (which also runs in a sandbox, not in process) HEIF is patched, but I doubt this is the last buffer overflow in HEIF, I will not be", "context": "", "use_case": "image processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "A heap overflow and SSO misconfiguration to compromise OpenAI internal repos"}, {"id": 796006930, "item_id": 49750433, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49750433", "by": "nikcub", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "there have been tons of bugs in ffmpeg and imagemagick and the core libs", "excerpt": "Reading the patch[0] for libheif the bug which lead to the vuln was around bounds checking for image overlays. the container can have multiple images and you can compose them in the output. heif also supports rotating, cropping, alpha channels, thumbnails and a ton of other features that a web forum where a user is uploading photos or screenshots doesn't need. It's a much, much larger attack surface than plain old sc", "context": "", "use_case": "image processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "A heap overflow and SSO misconfiguration to compromise OpenAI internal repos"}, {"id": 796001872, "item_id": 49750117, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49750117", "by": "oefrha", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Unsandboxed ImageMagick is known for being a security nightmare", "excerpt": "Unsandboxed ImageMagick is known for being a security nightmare even back when PHP ruled the world (not saying sandboxing is a panacea either, it just requires a different and potentially harder exploit to develop a full chain). Difference is it's easier than ever to turn vulnerabilities into full compromises. At some point we'll have to replace all parsers with something at least as safe as https://github.com/google", "context": "", "use_case": "image processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "A heap overflow and SSO misconfiguration to compromise OpenAI internal repos"}, {"id": 795060032, "item_id": 49691252, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49691252", "by": "Suppafly", "date": "2026-09-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used to make little meme generators with imagemagick before those were a thing", "excerpt": "I used to make little meme generators with imagemagick before those were a thing, wish I had thought to make a job of it.", "context": "", "use_case": "meme generators", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple iPod Engraver (2019)"}, {"id": 792628497, "item_id": 49539281, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539281", "by": "Helmut10001", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "warn", "quote": "ImageMagick uses 20GB RAM per Nikon RAW file (this triggered the Linux OOM-killer)", "excerpt": "I love immich! On board since June 2026. But, here's a brief report on my evening installation project.. setting up Immich: Ingesting a 1.7TB library (160k+ RAW photos) is apparently not a standard task! - Thumbnails and ML vectors consumed hundreds of gigabytes. I had to move the library folder to a dedicated ZFS HDD (700GB currently). - ImageMagick uses 20GB RAM per Nikon RAW file (this triggered the Linux OOM-kill", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW thumbnail processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 786514499, "item_id": 49157156, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49157156", "by": "skrellm", "date": "2026-08-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Imagemagick (unable to handle animated PNGs)", "excerpt": "> If you meet with a technical friend to drink a beer, and s/he ask what your project can do, which are the 10 coolest examples that you can show? Nothing. This is for those who already understand the benefit of shrinking images and animations using indexed palettes, and just looking for a tool to do it. > I'm not sure how to trigger the recolorize method You can't, that's not part of the tool. You need to implement ", "context": "", "use_case": "image conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Palette Manipulator"}, {"id": 786396547, "item_id": 49149784, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49149784", "by": "pseudocomposer", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "build out ffmpeg/imagemagick image/video resizing", "excerpt": "I\u2019ve been working on an Elm rewrite of the React FE of my federated social media service, Jonline (https://github.com/JonLatane/jonline). It\u2019s up at https://jonline.io (and https://bullcity.social and http://oakcity.social). Agents have been huge for me. In addition to the Elm app, I used them to: - build out ffmpeg/imagemagick image/video resizing - unify all my servers behind one Traefik ingress - build proper cros", "context": "", "use_case": "image resizing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)"}, {"id": 777817968, "item_id": 48613623, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48613623", "by": "bluebarbet", "date": "2026-06-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use ImageMagick hocus pocus to defeat them with trivial ease", "excerpt": "It's not that you're wrong, but the fact that it would be fraud is farcical and needs to be challenged. My bank demands that I perform this ridiculous hoop-jumping. Like others here, I use ImageMagick hocus pocus to defeat them with trivial ease (a couple of times they complained so I tweaked the algo a bit and they were happy). The whole situation is beyond absurd. It's security theater in place of security.", "context": "", "use_case": "making PDFs look scanned", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)"}, {"id": 770850369, "item_id": 48178148, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48178148", "by": "Hard_Space", "date": "2026-05-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have devolved a lot of tedious Photoshop work to scripts and routines", "excerpt": "I need Photoshop for an almost vanishingly small subset of all the things it is capable of, and this holds true for nearly all 'full-fledged' software that I use. So what may not be surfacing, in the absence of vibe-coded Photoshops, is the growing local script collections of many users. Since I have had AI to knock up Python scripts and workflows incorporating local ImageMagick and FFMPEG, I have devolved a lot of t", "context": "", "use_case": "scripted image processing", "switched_from": "Photoshop", "story": "Where Are the Vibecoded Photoshops?"}, {"id": 764103250, "item_id": 47756453, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47756453", "by": "khasan222", "date": "2026-04-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "one of the last rules about using imageMagick for comparison", "excerpt": "Hey, one thing I made with this technique is hartwork.life a simple Wordpress store for a friend. I used open ai to design it for me, and then used the techniques above to get Claude code to implement the proper designs. I am still trying to learn how to wrangle Claude properly, but I have this Claude.md[1] for that I used to make the website. In particular one of the last rules about using imageMagick for comparison", "context": "", "use_case": "screenshot comparison", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why AI Sucks at Front End"}, {"id": 761024321, "item_id": 47564020, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47564020", "by": "k310", "date": "2026-03-29", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I could use ImageMagick ... but it's not adaptive, as described above.", "excerpt": "This may be outside your plan, but I really could use a pdf editor that makes Internet Archive book scans more readable. Apparently, the scanner(s) adopt some compromise setting that renders halftones OK, but gives all text a \"dishwater gray\" background. If there are few pictures, I run the PDF through a quartz filter in Preview to threshold the text and later merge graphics pages with the \"contact sheet\" view from a", "context": "", "use_case": "image thresholding", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Free, in-browser PDF editor"}, {"id": 760588337, "item_id": 47536771, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47536771", "by": "Tor3", "date": "2026-03-26", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "and the rest I do with imagemagick", "excerpt": "I still use xv daily. I paid the sharewire price back in the day (I think it was $25), and the license, if I recall correctly, was a photo of John with a thumbs-up. I've added a few patches here and there to deal with slightly more modern jpeg features and the like, and for the most part it handles everything I want to do, and the rest I do with imagemagick. For just looking at images I use xv all the time. Fast, and", "context": "", "use_case": "image editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "John Bradley, author of xv, has passed away"}, {"id": 756927184, "item_id": 47307949, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47307949", "by": "kvgr", "date": "2026-03-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "when i wanted to add borders to photos I took to upload to IG i used imagemagick", "excerpt": "Very small app for framing photos on Mac/ipad/iphone. I know some web alternatives. But when i wanted to add borders to photos I took to upload to IG i used imagemagick. I want to make something stylish(no tacky borderds), also usable for batch processing. I have prorotype and need to fix some issues.", "context": "building a photo framing app", "use_case": "adding photo borders", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)"}, {"id": 745122320, "item_id": 46570145, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46570145", "by": "1a527dd5", "date": "2026-01-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love ImageMagick. I've used it a few times to make a PDF look scanned.", "excerpt": "I love ImageMagick. I've used it a few times to make a PDF look scanned. convert -density 90 input.pdf -rotate 0.5 -attenuate 0.2 +noise Multiplicative -colorspace Gray output.pdf", "context": "", "use_case": "making PDFs look scanned", "switched_from": "", "story": "Creating Embroidered Charts with R and ImageMagick"}, {"id": 741782928, "item_id": 46361433, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46361433", "by": "linkregister", "date": "2025-12-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Conversions on the command line are simple enough with imagemagick.", "excerpt": "I save my iPhone photos to my linux desktop. The default image viewing software in the Gnome 3 window manager can display HEIC images. Conversions on the command line are simple enough with imagemagick. Prior to conversion, I use exiftool to rename the files from IMG_0123.HEIC to the date the image or video was taken, followed by a truncated sha256 digest of the file, e.g. 2025-12-22-1732-f8b7302.HEIC. Otherwise, you", "context": "Linux desktop user", "use_case": "HEIC to JPG conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How are most people converting HEIC to jpg?"}]}