Troubleshooters.Com and Linux Library Present:

Using ImageMagick Display

Copyright © 2025 by Steve Litt

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CONTENTS

Introduction

The ImageMagick tools are an excellent way to handle cropping and various other tasks needed for scanned images, such as photographs. The magick display command is an excellent WYSIWYG way to handle such tasks on TIFF files. It's much easier to use than Gimp.

That being said, the magick display program has several gotchas. This document fixes all those gotchas.

From this point forward magick display is called display, because it's shorter and, as of December 2025 the command display actually runs the program.

Create a Safety Shellscript

display has an unusual and unexpected user interface, running the risk of data loss. For instance, it has no "save as", just a "save". The "save" option lets you choose a filename, but it's all too easy to accidentally save your cropped image over the original, which might not be what you want. Therefore, the following is a safe shellscript you can use. I call it ddisplay.sh:

#!/usr/bin/ksh
cp -P $1 junk.tiff
magick display junk.tiff

Armed with ddisplay.sh, you'd have to work very hard to harm the original. Obviously, when you're done you'll rename junk.tiff to another filename, so your next run of ddisplay.sh doesn't overwrite what you just did.

Display Program Gotchas

The display program has a user interface harkening back to the days when every programmer made his own user interface without regard to what people were used to. This isn't surprising, given the fact that it was released in 1990, targeting X-Windows machines like VAX, SPARK, etc. In fact, John Cristy started coding the ImageMagick suite in 1987, the same year that IBM released the CUA (Common User Access) standard, so in 1987 everybody dreamed up their own user interface. Even in 1990, the CUA standard was widely disregarded.

Right Click Instantly Aborts

Don't ever left click on the display program window, because if you do, the program ends. No "are you sure" or anything like that, it just ends without giving you a chance to save your changes.

Escape Instantly Aborts

Same as left click, the program ends without giving you a chance to save your changes or reconsider.

Left Click to Access the Menu

Unlike most software written since 1990, the way to access the menu system in the display program is to left click on the window. NEVER right click like you would for most other software: The program unconditionally ends if you right click.

The Pan Icon and Menus Are Separate Windows

The pan icon is a tiny window used for panning up and down on images extending beyond the window. It takes a little getting used to, but it's OK.

The menu system is a separate window that can be created and removed by left clicking on the image.

When a menu window and/or a pan icon window has focus, it absorbs all keystrokes, preventing normal display hotkeys from working. Be aware of this or things get very confusing.

Comma and Period Are How You Zoom

You zoom out with the comma (,) on the keyboard, and you zoom in with the period (.). It's easier to remember them as zooming out with Shift+< and zooming in with Shift+>. Lots of older documentation speaks of other ways to zoom, but my 7.1.1-47 works exclusively with comma and period, with the other documented methods doing nothing or causing harm to the image you're editing.

Forget You Have a Mouse Wheel

If you're anything like me, your mouse wheel is how you navigate long menus, picklists, panning, zooming and other tasks. In display, your mouse wheel can lead to all sorts of unexpected and unpleasant situations. Even where it does work, panning up and down, the per-click travel is so course that it's useless. Use the pan icon window instead. For a nice, easy life in display land, don't use your mouse wheel.

Tricky Menu System

The menu system is tricky. First, the top level menu is actually a window. Second, to prevent heartache using display's menu system, single left click your choice. Do not continue to press the left mouse button as you navigate, because under certain conditions this can turn out badly.

Tiny Fonts

If your display is anything like mine, it comes with fonts suitable exclusively for people with 20/20 vision or better. If you're not a member of this elite society, don't worry, a later section in this document describes how to enlarge the fonts.

Why Bother?

With all the gotchas described in the preceding section, why even bother to use display? I use it because it's the best alternative I can find. Gimp has become something with a learning curve similar to learning a new language. nomacs cannot save TIFF files. Neither can most other non-KDE pixel editors, at least the ones available to me on Void Linux.

I've removed all KDE applications and libraries from my computer because KDE is, in my opinion, a massively entangled mess.

If you're willing to have KDE on your computer, then you have a couple alternatives that I've heard from ChatGPT are superior to display:

Speaking for myself, display is a hassle but it's the best alternative I have.

How to Enlarge display's Fonts

When you run display for the first time, left click inside the window to bring up the menu window. If the fonts are too small for you to comfortably read, insert one of the following commands into ~/.Xdefaults:

Save the file and then run the following command:

xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults

If you receive a "command not found" error while running the preceding command, install the package containing xrdb.

That's it. The next time you run display your fonts will be bigger. If they're still too small, use the next larger font and repeat. Once you have a font size you like, you're done. Now that you can see what you're doing, you can operate display.

Menu Operations

When it comes to menus, you must restrict your mousing to one action: A short left click. Right clicking instantly aborts the program with no chance to back out or save your work. Click and drag sometimes does strange things, and sometimes those strange things are destructive.

Danger!

Menus for the display program work very differently if the menu window is not on top of the display window. If the menu window has been moved outside the display window then a single left click on a submenu item selects the first item on the submenu, tries to execute it, and throws one or two error messages. You can make room by moving the menu window outside the display window, but don't use the outside window until you've moved it back over the display window.

To access the top level menu, which is a window, simply left click anywhere on the image. To close the access window, left click anywhere on the image. If sub-menus are open, left click once to get rid of each level.

Danger!

Never press the keyboard's Escape key to close the menu window. In some cases it does nothing, but in others it aborts the program without the chance to save. Never press the Escape key for any reason when using display!

Once again, the only menu action you should ever take in display is the left single-click!

How To Crop

My main use for display is clipping. Cropping is a situation where left-click and drag does what you want.

If you can't see the whole area you want to crop in the display window, even after panning to the center of the crop area, press the comma key to zoom out, see if now the crop area is all visible. Keep pressing the comma key until it's visible. The display window might resize (shrink) as you zoom out. Do not resize the window, because if you do, you'll distort the image.

Once you have the whole crop area visible in the window, click one corner and drag to the opposite corner. Be aware that the crop rectangle's response to dragging is weird, so you might need to pick up and put down the mouse to keep dragging.

Wrapup

If you think I've damned the ImageMagick Display program with faint praise, you're right. All I can say is that if it frees me from having to use Gimp, I'm happy. If, unlike me, you don't object to having KDE programs and libraries on your computer, you're probably better off with Gwenview or KolourPaint.

I wrote this web page primarily so I could use ImageMagick Display without screwing everything up.

Note:

The rest of the ImageMagick suite works just fine and I highly recommend it.