[Magick-announce] ImageMagick 5.4.8 released

[valhalla at imagemagick.org]

The ImageMagick Studio LLC development group announces the release of
ImageMagick 5.4.8.  Version 5.4.8 is a feature release but also resolves
bugs reported against 5.4.7.

ImageMagick is a robust collection of tools and libraries to read,
write, and manipulate an image in many image formats (over 72 major
formats) including popular formats like FlashPIX, GIF, JPEG, PDF, PNG,
Photo CD, SVG, TIFF, and WMF. With ImageMagick images can be created
dynamically, making it suitable for Web applications. You can also
resize, rotate, sharpen, color reduce, or add special effects to an
image and save your completed work in the same or differing image
format. Image processing operations are available from the command line,
as well as through C, C++, PERL, Visual Basic, and WSH based programming
interfaces. Support for programming with Java and Python is provided by
3rd parties.

ImageMagick is copyrighted by ImageMagick Studio, a nonprofit organization
dedicated to making software imaging solutions freely available.
ImageMagick is available for free, may be used to support both open and
proprietary applications, and may be redistributed without fee.

Significant changes from the 5.4.7 release (see release ChangeLog for
details):

  o General:

    - Platform independent changes

      + Fixed a problem when writing PPM files with all-gray pixels.

      + Color profiles are identified as ICM rather than IPTC.

      + 8-Bit Quantum PCD images now read correctly.

    - Windows specific changes

     + A Windows binary install package is available which is based
       on the Inno Setup Compiler "http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php".

     + Link libraries and header files are provided so that applications
       may compile with ImageMagick without building the ImageMagick
       source package.

     + PerlMagick built for ActiveState ActivePerl is optionally
       installed.

     + The ImageMagickObject OLE Control (usable from VisualBasic and
       WSH) is optionally installed.

     + ImageMagick installation locations are recorded via registry
       settings so that it can find its components (no more need for
       MAGICK_HOME!).

     + File extension associations are created for file types that
       ImageMagick supports.

     + The list of TrueType fonts available is obtained from the
       Windows Registry rather than being hard-coded.

     + The Ghostscript executable and Ghostscript fonts are discovered
       automatically.

     + The Cygwin build should now properly distinguish between drive
       letters and magick types for path specifications.

     + Magick++ (C++ API) now builds as a DLL under Windows.
  
  o Utilities enhancements/changes:
     - No changes in this release.

  o C API enhancements:
     - No changes in this release.

  o C++ API enhancements:

     - A profile() method is added to support accessing named profiles.

     - The type() method now specifies the image type to use while
       writing.

  o Perl API enhancements:
     - No changes in this release.

The ImageMagick WWW page is

  http://www.imagemagick.org/
 
The ImageMagick 5.4.8 source code is available via ftp as

  ftp://ftp.imagemagick.org/pub/ImageMagick/ImageMagick-5.4.8.tar.gz

The ImageMagick 5.4.8 Windows install package is available via ftp as

 ftp://ftp.imagemagick.org/pub/ImageMagick/binaries/ImageMagick-5.4.8-win2k.exe

If ftp.imagemagick.org is overloaded, check the list of mirrors at
http://www.imagemagick.org/www/archives.html for other mirrors.

ImageMagick is developed by the members of the ImageMagick Studio
team:

John Cristy           - Principal designer and author.
Bob Friesenhahn       - Magick++, Unix modules, magic, configure, CVS,
                        tests, bug tracking, Windows install, WMF.
William Radcliffe     - VisualMagick, FlashPix, TIFF, timers,
                        watermarking, Windows modules, and fast polygon
                        renderer.
Glenn Randers-Pehrson - PNG, MNG, test scripts, documentation
                        enhancements.
Leonard Rosenthol     - Mac support, XCF, PSD, conjure, drawing
                        enhancements.

We would like to give special thanks to several people who assist with
ImageMagick:

Alexander Zimmermann  - Linux binary distributions.
Jaroslav Fojtik       - CUT, ART, and MATLAB coder modules.

There are many other individual contributors, some of whom made
significant contributions to ImageMagick but shall remain anonymous
anyway.