libvips/libvips
A fast image processing library with low memory needs. observed · 2026-08-28
Health v2 · maintenance only
95/100
- Activity 99
- Release rhythm 87
- Longevity 100
How is this computed?
round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-09-02. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.
- gap_med: 47
- age_days: 5699
- days_rel: 8
- days_push: 8
- n_releases_24m: 14
Adoption not part of the score
11602 stars · 797 forks observed · 2026-08-28
What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded
libvips is a fast, demand-driven, horizontally threaded image processing library with low memory needs, offering around 300 operations across arithmetic, convolution, resampling, colour, and more. It supports a wide range of formats (JPEG, PNG, TIFF, WebP, HEIC, AVIF, PDF, SVG, GIF, OpenEXR, OpenSlide, etc.) and provides C/C++ APIs, a CLI, and bindings for many languages.
Use cases
- resize and thumbnail images quickly with low memory usage
- convert images between formats like JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, AVIF, and TIFF
- process very large images such as whole-slide microscopy scans via OpenSlide
- rasterize PDFs and SVGs to images
- build an image processing backend for a web service or CMS
- batch-process image pipelines from the command line with vips and vipsthumbnail
- compose, crop, rotate, and colour-correct images programmatically
- handle animated GIFs and multipage TIFFs
When to choose
- you need fast image processing with much lower memory use than ImageMagick
- you need broad format support including scientific formats like FITS, NIfTI, and OpenSlide
- you are building a high-throughput image service (e.g. thumbnails, imgproxy-style resizing)
- you want bindings for Python, Ruby, PHP, .NET, Go, Lua, Elixir, Java, or Nim
- you need a lightweight CLI for scripted image conversions
When to avoid
- you need advanced drawing, text rendering, or creative design features better served by ImageMagick or a graphics editor
- you need GPU-accelerated image processing
- you require a permissive license, since libvips is LGPL-2.1-or-later
- you need a pure-language implementation without native dependencies
Facets
library · maturity stable
image-processing cli sdk image-processing graphics media cross-platform windows cross-platform cli python rust go ruby php jvm dotnet lua elixir image-formats thumbnailing low-memory streaming-pipeline bindings jpeg png tiff webp heic avif pdf svg gif hdr openslide linux macos
4 sources
- readme: https://github.com/libvips/libvips · fetched 2026-08-28 · c6b904938f52
- homepage: https://libvips.org · fetched 2026-08-29 · c68b3be407aa
- site_page: https://www.libvips.org/install.html · fetched 2026-08-29 · c99c20eb7f0b
- site_page: https://www.libvips.org/API/current · fetched 2026-08-29 · c8b31ffcdebd
Member repositories
| Repository | Role | Health v2 |
|---|---|---|
| libvips/libvips | main | 95 |
For agents
Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00 · Report a problem