Install ImageMagick on a server (with HEIC support)

3 minutes read

ImageMagick is a pretty neat image convert tool, with support for animated gif. It is well integrated to the Drupal ecosystem. Here is how to install it on modern systems.

1. Install the dependencies

Make sure that you have [https://github.com/ImageMagick/ImageMagick/discussions/6682#discussioncomment-9066741](libtool and gcc installed). To do so, use the following command:

On AlmaLinux :

sudo yum install libtool gcc-c++ gcc  make  git  wget  libjpeg-turbo-devel  libpng-devel  libtiff-devel  libwebp-devel  freetype-devel  ghostscript  libX11-devel  libxml2-devel  libwmf-devel  zlib-devel

On Ubuntu :

sudo apt install libtool gcc-c++ gcc  make  git  wget  libjpeg-turbo-devel  libpng-devel  libtiff-devel  libwebp-devel  freetype-devel  ghostscript  libX11-devel  libxml2-devel  libwmf-devel  zlib-devel

2. Download and extract the selected ImageMagick package

Choose the tar.gz version you want from the following list and copy the URL

Download the package from ImageMagick website and extract it to the ImageMagick-7 folder with the following commands:

cd /usr/src/
mkdir imagemagick
cd imagemagick
wget https://download.imagemagick.org/archive/releases/ImageMagick-7.1.2-3.tar.gz
tar -xvzf ImageMagick-7.1.2-3.tar.gz
mv ImageMagick-7.1.2-3 ImageMagick-7
cd ImageMagick-7

3. Install ImageMagick

Build and install ImageMagick with the following commands:

./configure
make
sudo make install
make check
sudo ldconfig

4. Validate the installation

Run the following command to make sure that ImageMagick is now available:

which convert

The list of supported file types can be validated with the following command:

magick -list format

Or check the support for a specific file type with the following command:

magick -list format | grep AVIF

5. (optional) HEIC support

Le passage suivant décrit les étapes facultatives pour ajouter le support des fichiers HEIC sur AlmaLinux 8.9. Les commandes sont différentes sur Ubuntu et certains dépendances ne sont peut-être pas requises sur AlmaLinux > 8.9

Supporting additional file types brings its own set of complications. Additional libraries must be installed and compiled. During ImageMagick installation, these will be loaded if enabled (e.g., --with-heic=yes).

If you want to support .heic and .avif files, the libde265 and libheif libraries are required. Compiling them requires cmake and a recent version of GCC (g++), which is not included with AlmaLinux 8.9.

Build Dependencies

On AlmaLinux 8.9, run the following commands to install build dependencies:

yum update 
sudo dnf install gcc-toolset-14
sudo dnf install cmake

It's important to note that installing GCC does not replace the operating system's gcc, which is good news from a stability perspective. However, it does mean that we need to specify which gcc to use when we compile.

Compiling the libde265 and libheif libraries

Using the CC, CCX, CMAKE_C_COMPILER, and CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER parameters, it is possible to specify the version of the C++ compiler to use.

# Additional dependency
yum install x265 x265-devel

# libde265
cd /usr/src/
sudo git clone https://github.com/strukturag/libde265.git --branch v1.0.16
cd libde265/
sudo ./autogen.sh
sudo ./configure
sudo make CC=/opt/rh/gcc-toolset-14/root/usr/bin/gcc CXX=/opt/rh/gcc-toolset-14/root/usr/bin/g++
sudo make install CC=/opt/rh/gcc-toolset-14/root/usr/bin/gcc CXX=/opt/rh/gcc-toolset-14/root/usr/bin/g++

# libheif
cd /usr/src/
sudo git clone https://github.com/strukturag/libheif.git --branch v1.20.2
cd libheif/
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -D CMAKE_C_COMPILER=/opt/rh/gcc-toolset-14/root/usr/bin/gcc -D CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/opt/rh/gcc-toolset-14/root/usr/bin/g++ --preset=release ..
sudo make CC=/opt/rh/gcc-toolset-14/root/usr/bin/gcc CXX=/opt/rh/gcc-toolset-14/root/usr/bin/g++
sudo make install CC=/opt/rh/gcc-toolset-14/root/usr/bin/gcc CXX=/opt/rh/gcc-toolset-14/root/usr/bin/g++ 
sudo ldconfig /usr/lib64/

CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX: specifying CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr ensures that the library is installed in /usr/lib64 rather than /usr/local/lib64. This makes it easier to discover the library, as this folder is in the default pkg-config configuration, which is used by ImageMagick. You can see which folders are searched by using the pkg-config --variable pc_path pkg-config command.

Then, we recompile ImageMagick with the additional libraries:

cd /usr/src/imagemagick/ImageMagick-7
./configure --with-heic=yes --with-jpeg=yes --with-png=yes --with-tiff=yes --with-webp=yes
make
sudo make install

The instructions are based on the article Medium - How to Install ImageMagick with HEIC Support on CentOS Linux (and Other Linux Distributions).