How to install ImageMagick 7 on Ubuntu

ImageMagick is great. It allows your web app to process, resize, filter, and do all kinds of other nifty things with images.

Not so long ago, ImageMagick 7 was released. One of the big new features was full support for WEBP images, the new image format from Google.

Now, you might think it’s easy to just upgrade to ImageMagick 7. If you’re using a linux OS like Ubuntu, you just apt install and you’re done, right?

Well, no…

As usual, we don’t get the latest and greatest packages – at least not in Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS.

That means we need to install ImageMagick 7 from source.

And that usually means that something won’t work…

But fear not! Despite a severe lack of info on The Internets, I managed to get it to work:

Step 1: Uninstall your old ImageMagick by doing:

apt remove imagemagick imagemagick-6-common

Step 2: Just in case, install all the build dependencies for ImageMagick:

apt build-dep imagemagick

Step 3: Install image libraries, including WEBP:

apt-get install checkinstall libwebp-dev libopenjp2-7-dev librsvg2-dev libde265-dev

Step 4: Install ImageMagick (latest) from source:

wget https://www.imagemagick.org/download/ImageMagick.tar.gz
tar xzvf ImageMagick.tar.gz

cd to the extracted directory, and then run:

./configure --enable-shared --with-modules --with-gslib
make
make install
ldconfig /usr/local/lib
identify -version

Ta-DA!!! You’re done!

Note that the ./configure stuff with the options above is very important. Otherwise, stuff won’t work.

Now you can move along and use ImageMagick 7, install RMagick 4.x in your rails app, or whatever…

What’s more, your app will now support the processing of WEBP images in ImageMagick!

6 Comments

Ryan J on 26 May 2020 at 12:49

It’s “Teh Internets”, Scotty. Get it right! 😄

stephan tschiesche on 13 February 2021 at 16:02

works great! thanks! Stephan

Chris Papademetrious on 15 March 2021 at 13:43

Installing ImageMagick 7 in linux from source is a pain because there are lots of optional packages needed to support all of ImageMagick’s “delegates” (image formats). The compile will succeed, but the resulting install will be missing support for common formats (PNG, TIFF, etc.).

I *strongly* suggest using ImageMagick Easy Install (IMEI):

https://github.com/SoftCreatR/imei/

Not only does it take care of all this for you, but it can also incrementally update your local install after the initial installation.

Kim on 7 October 2021 at 17:42

Thanks, it worked! I really needed this assistance, I would have been helpless without it and I really needed ImageMagick 7 to process a GeoTIFF.

There was a hiccup when it told me “You must put some ‘deb-src’ URIs in your sources.list” at the `sudo apt build-dep imagemagick` step, but a quick google showed me to just check the box for ‘Source Code’ under the Ubuntu Software tab in the Settings section of the Software and Updates tool.

ertzert on 7 April 2022 at 17:12

Where is the extracted directory?!

Scottie on 7 April 2022 at 17:21

Just do “ls -la” and find the name. The compressed file will decompress into a folder, but the name of the folder changes depending on the specific version of ImageMagick at the time you download it.
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Ryan J on 26 May 2020 at 12:49

It’s “Teh Internets”, Scotty. Get it right! 😄
stephan tschiesche on 13 February 2021 at 16:02

works great! thanks! Stephan
Chris Papademetrious on 15 March 2021 at 13:43

Installing ImageMagick 7 in linux from source is a pain because there are lots of optional packages needed to support all of ImageMagick’s “delegates” (image formats). The compile will succeed, but the resulting install will be missing support for common formats (PNG, TIFF, etc.).

I *strongly* suggest using ImageMagick Easy Install (IMEI):

https://github.com/SoftCreatR/imei/

Not only does it take care of all this for you, but it can also incrementally update your local install after the initial installation.
Kim on 7 October 2021 at 17:42

Thanks, it worked! I really needed this assistance, I would have been helpless without it and I really needed ImageMagick 7 to process a GeoTIFF.

There was a hiccup when it told me “You must put some ‘deb-src’ URIs in your sources.list” at the `sudo apt build-dep imagemagick` step, but a quick google showed me to just check the box for ‘Source Code’ under the Ubuntu Software tab in the Settings section of the Software and Updates tool.
ertzert on 7 April 2022 at 17:12

Where is the extracted directory?!
- Scottie on 7 April 2022 at 17:21
  
  Just do “ls -la” and find the name. The compressed file will decompress into a folder, but the name of the folder changes depending on the specific version of ImageMagick at the time you download it.