identify(1)

describes the format and characteristics of one or more image files.

NAME

identify - describes the format and characteristics of one or more image files.

SYNOPSIS

magick identify [options] input-file

OVERVIEW

The identify program is a member of the ImageMagick(1) suite of tools. It 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 (by default off use -define unique=true option), 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.

For more information about the identify command, point your browser to file:///usr/share/doc/ImageMagick-7/www/identify.html or https://imagemagick.org/script/identify.php.

DESCRIPTION

Image Settings:
-alpha option on, activate, off, deactivate, set, opaque, copy
transparent, extract, background, or shape
-antialias remove pixel-aliasing
-authenticate value decrypt image with this password
-clip clip along the first path from the 8BIM profile
-clip-mask filename associate a clip mask with the image
-clip-path id clip along a named path from the 8BIM profile
-colorspace type alternate image colorspace
-crop geometry cut out a rectangular region of the image
-define format:option
define one or more image format options
-define unique=true return the number of unique colors in the image
-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. contrast, correlation)
-format "string" output formatted image characteristics
-fuzz distance colors within this distance are considered equal
-gamma value of gamma correction
-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
-matte store matte channel if the image has one
-moments report image moments
-monitor monitor progress
-ping efficiently determine image attributes
-precision value maximum number of significant digits to print
-quiet suppress all warning messages
-read-mask filename associate a read mask with the image
-regard-warnings pay attention to warning messages
-respect-parentheses settings remain in effect until parenthesis boundary
-sampling-factor geometry
horizontal and vertical sampling factor
-seed value seed a new sequence of pseudo-random numbers
-set attribute value set an image attribute
-size geometry width and height of image
-strip strip image of all profiles and comments
-unique display the number of unique colors in the image
-units type the units of image resolution
-verbose print detailed information about the image
-virtual-pixel method
virtual pixel access method

Image Operators:
-auto-orient automatically orient image
-channel mask set the image channel mask
-grayscale method convert image to grayscale
-negate replace each pixel with its complementary color

Miscellaneous Options:
-debug events display copious debugging information
-help print program options
-list type print a list of supported option arguments
-log format format of debugging information
-version print version information

By default, the image format of `file' is determined by its magic number. To specify a particular image format, precede the filename with an image format name and a colon (i.e. ps:image) or specify the image type as the filename suffix (i.e. image.ps). Specify 'file' as '-' for standard input or output.

NOTE

Although some options appear to modify the file to be identified, the identify command is strictly read only. For instance, the crop option crops the in-memory image and then describes the result.

COPYRIGHT

History

Arch Linux 2026-11-01: the text shown here
Debian 13 (Trixie)
Debian 12 (Bookworm)
Debian 11 (Bullseye)
Debian 10 (Buster)
Debian 9 (Stretch)
Debian 8 (Jessie)
Debian 7 (Wheezy)
Debian 6.0 (Squeeze)
Debian 5.0 (Lenny)
Debian 4.0 (Etch)
Debian 3.1 (Sarge)
Debian 3.0 (Woody)
Debian 2.2 (Potato)
Debian 2.1 (Slink) to Debian 2.0 (Hamm)

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