Stacking Images with PerlMagick

Originally published on: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 14:46:51 +0000

I often receive e-mails from friends containing humorous images. One of my friends had forwarded an e-mail with a few dozen very funny images attached to it. I found the pictures to be so funny that I felt like posting them to an online forum that I frequent.

Unfortunately, this forum's image-upload feature only allowed for one image at a time to be uploaded. I was hoping to upload them as a group.

I had considered trying to capture some screenshots of a screenful each. An attempt at capturing, cutting, positioning, ...etc. proved to be tedious. I wanted a solution that I could use again. My thoughts turned immediately to the Perl interface to the ImageMagick library: PerlMagick.

Please note that ImageMagick libraries exist for many different programming languages. An ActiveX version is available so that any ActiveX-aware programming language ( including VBScript and Javascript WSH scripts ) can leverage ImageMagick. I had used PerlMagick before and often find good Perl examples via web-searches. I tend to think of PerlMagick and ImageMagick synonymously.

I found a sample program on the web that used the ImageMagick Append() method. When calling the Append() method, one may set the stack parameter attribute to true to force the newly-generated image to be comprised of a top-down set of all of the images in the image object, "stacked" on top of one another.

The following code reads for JPEG images ( i1.jpg, i2.jpg, i3.jpg, and i4.jpg ) and generates an image called stack.jpg that contains all of the above:

# License: MIT / X11
# Copyright (c) 2009 by James K. Lawless
#
# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
# obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
# files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
# restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
# copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
# copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
# Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
# conditions:
#
# The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
# included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
#
# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
# EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
# OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
# NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
# HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
# WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
# FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
# OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

use Image::Magick;

$image = Image::Magick->New;
$image->Read("i1.jpg");
$image->Read("i2.jpg");
$image->Read("i3.jpg");
$image->Read("i4.jpg");

$p=$image->Append(stack=>true);

$p->Write('stack.jpg');

undef $image;

Unless otherwise noted, all code and text entries are Copyright Š2009 by James K. Lawless

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