It should be noted that the project CIMG/GMIC is _not_ built and billed as an IM alternative. It's an image processing framework that happens to have similar utility to IM for some folks and that is also available as a plug-in to GIMP for visual+interactive use.
I recently using G'MIC to produce a video for a client. We used the G'MIC plugin in GIMP to build up the look, then used those parameters to drive it on the command line frame by frame. It's very slow, so we ended up having to build a solution with AWS to do massively parallel processing, but in the end it turned out great.<p>G'MIC is really good at that kind of thing. I wouldn't use it to replace ImageMagick though.
So, a question: why? Just so that there is an alternative (not that there is anything wrong with that), or is there an issue with ImageMagick that discourages some people from using it?
I want to be nothing but encouraging, but I have simultaneous positive and negative reactions. On one hand, we need better FOSS alternatives to imagemagick, on the other hand, using imagemagick as the target to compare against means it's doomed to repeat some of IMs mistakes. And sure enough, using the online server's filter examples, so many of them seem to exist to fill a checkbox and increase the filter count, but are utility wise, useless as a serious filter, and aesthetically unpleasant to boot. I have the same contention with a significant portion imagemagick's feature set.<p>The IM/GM command line is also a disaster of weird names for things and inconsistent conventions and hundreds and hundreds of pages of manual. Reinvent IM's command line to be pleasant and simple and make sense, and it'll be a HUGE win!<p>What we really need is an open source alternative to is Nuke or Shake (RIP). Anyone want to help build that? ;)<p>I can't get to the project page, but I hope that GMIC borrows the positive developments from GraphicsMagick. One of the things GM improved over IM is large image handling. GM can stream a gigapixel image resize in minutes, while IM gets stuck in virtual memory swap for hours.