The right way to Create a Diff of Two Pictures

Once I was a baby, I cherished on the lookout for Waldo within the “The place’s Waldo?” ebook collection. Lately I am a sucker for TMZ’s “What is the Huge Frigin Distinction” photographs, the place TMZ barely modifications a picture and it’s important to spot the variations between the 2. That bought me to considering — how simply may I automate diff’ing two photographs? This StackOverflow publish was gold.

To create a diff of two related photographs, we’ll use ImageMagick’s convert command line utility with a big host of configurations:

convert '(' image1.png -flatten -grayscale Rec709Luminance ')' 
        '(' image2.png -flatten -grayscale Rec709Luminance ')' 
        '(' -clone 0-1 -compose darken -composite ')' 
        -channel RGB -combine diff.png

How efficient is that this command with its configuration arguments? Let’s take a look:

Unique Picture

Modified Picture

Diff’ed Picture

The diff picture result’s fairly informative! The dimensions of the sun shades is clearly offered, and should you look carefully, you may see one cranium on the top-right of the shirt has been flipped.

No matter your motive for eager to establish the distinction two photographs, ImageMagick’s convert instrument is spectacular. You’ll be able to do one million issues with ImageMagick; try my Media tutorials to be taught extra superior methods to switch photographs, movies, and audio!