Example Usage • Option Summary

The identify program describes the format and characteristics of one or more image files. It also reports if an image is incomplete or corrupt. The information returned includes the image number, the file name, the width and height of the image, whether the image is colormapped or not, the number of colors in the image, the number of bytes in the image, the format of the image (JPEG, PNM, etc.), and finally the number of seconds it took to read and process the image. Many more attributes are available with the verbose option. See Command Line Processing for advice on how to structure your identify command or see below for example usages of the command.

Example Usage

We list a few examples of the identify command here to illustrate its usefulness and ease of use. To get started, lets identify an image in the JPEG format:

-> identify rose.jpg
rose.jpg JPEG 70x46 70x46+0+0 8-bit sRGB 2.36KB 0.000u 0:00.000

Next, we look at the same image in greater detail:

-> identify -verbose rose.jpg
Image: rose.jpg
  Format: JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group JFIF format)
  Mime type: images/jpeg
  Class: DirectClass
  Geometry: 70x46+0+0
  Units: Undefined
  Type: TrueColor
  Endianess: Undefined
  Colorspace: sRGB
  Depth: 8-bit
  Channel depth:
    red: 8-bit
    green: 8-bit
    blue: 8-bit
  Channel statistics:
    Pixels: 3220
    Red:
      min: 35 (0.137255)
      max: 255 (1)
      mean: 145.57 (0.570865)
      standard deviation: 67.2976 (0.263912)
      kurtosis: -1.37971
      skewness: 0.0942169
      entropy: 0.974889
    Green:
      min: 33 (0.129412)
      max: 255 (1)
      mean: 89.2193 (0.349879)
      standard deviation: 52.0803 (0.204236)
      kurtosis: 2.70722
      skewness: 1.82562
      entropy: 0.877139
    Blue:
      min: 11 (0.0431373)
      max: 255 (1)
      mean: 80.3742 (0.315193)
      standard deviation: 53.8536 (0.21119)
      kurtosis: 2.90978
      skewness: 1.92617
      entropy: 0.866692
  Image statistics:
    Overall:
      min: 11 (0.0431373)
      max: 255 (1)
      mean: 105.055 (0.411979)
      standard deviation: 58.1422 (0.228008)
      kurtosis: 1.25759
      skewness: 1.4277
      entropy: 0.90624
  Rendering intent: Perceptual
  Gamma: 0.454545
  Chromaticity:
    red primary: (0.64,0.33)
    green primary: (0.3,0.6)
    blue primary: (0.15,0.06)
    white point: (0.3127,0.329)
  Background color: white
  Border color: srgb(223,223,223)
  Matte color: grey74
  Transparent color: black
  Interlace: None
  Intensity: Undefined
  Compose: Over
  Page geometry: 70x46+0+0
  Dispose: Undefined
  Iterations: 0
  Compression: JPEG
  Quality: 92
  Orientation: Undefined
  Properties:
    date:create: 2014-11-09T09:00:35-05:00
    date:modify: 2014-11-09T09:00:35-05:00
    jpeg:colorspace: 2
    jpeg:sampling-factor: 2x2,1x1,1x1
    signature: 22a99838bd5594250f706d1d9383b2830f439fcbaf1455cbe2f7f59a4deb065a
  Artifacts:
    filename: rose.jpg
    verbose: true
  Tainted: False
  Filesize: 2.36KB
  Number pixels: 3.22K
  Pixels per second: 3.22EB
  User time: 0.000u
  Elapsed time: 0:01.000
  Version: ImageMagick Q16 http://www.imagemagick.org

To get the print size in inches of an image at 72 DPI, use:

-> identify -format "%[fx:w/72] by %[fx:h/72] inches" document.png
8.5 x 11 inches

The depth and dimensions of a raw image must be specified on the command line:

-> identify -depth 8 -size 640x480 image.raw
image.raw RGB 640x480 sRGB 9kb 0.000u 0:01

Here we display the image texture features, moments, perceptual hash, and the number of unique colors in the image:

-> identify -verbose -features 1 -moments -unique image.png

Here is a special define that outputs the location of the minimum or maximum pixel of the image:

identify -precision 5 -define identify:locate=maximum -define identify:limit=3 image.png

You can find additional examples of using identify in Examples of ImageMagick Usage.

Option Summary

The identify command recognizes these options. Click on an option to get more details about how that option works.

Option	Description
-alpha	on, activate, off, deactivate, set, opaque, copy", transparent, extract, background, or shape the alpha channel
-antialias	remove pixel-aliasing
-authenticate value	decrypt image with this password
-channel type	apply option to select image channels
-clip	clip along the first path from the 8BIM profile
-clip-mask filename	associate clip mask with the image
-clip-path id	clip along a named path from the 8BIM profile
-colorspace type	set image colorspace
-crop geometry	crop the image
-debug events	display copious debugging information
-define format:option	define one or more image format options
-density geometry	horizontal and vertical density of the image
-depth value	image depth
-endian type	endianness (MSB or LSB) of the image
-extract geometry	extract area from image
-features distance	analyze image features (e.g. contract, correlations, etc.).
-format string	output formatted image characteristics
-gamma value	level of gamma correction
-grayscale method	convert image to grayscale
-help	print program options
-interlace type	type of image interlacing scheme
-interpolate method	pixel color interpolation method
-limit type value	pixel cache resource limit
-list type	Color, Configure, Delegate, Format, Magic, Module, Resource, or Type
-log format	format of debugging information
-mask filename	associate a mask with the image
-moments	display image moments and perceptual hash.
-monitor	monitor progress
-negate	replace each pixel with its complementary color
-precision value	set the maximum number of significant digits to be printed
-quiet	suppress all warning messages
-regard-warnings	pay attention to warning messages.
-respect-parentheses	settings remain in effect until parenthesis boundary.
-sampling-factor geometry	horizontal and vertical sampling factor
-set attribute value	set an image attribute
-size geometry	width and height of image
-strip	strip image of all profiles and comments
-unique	display image the number of unique colors in the image.
-units type	the units of image resolution
-verbose	print detailed information about the image
-version	print version information
-virtual-pixel method	access method for pixels outside the boundaries of the image