# SmartImage 0.0.4 - simple yet powerful cross-platform thumbnail generation and image manipulation i

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/smartimage-0-0-4-simple-yet-powerful-cross-platform-thumbnail-generation-and-image-manipulation-i/191357>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [July 10, 2010, 6:13am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/smartimage-0-0-4-simple-yet-powerful-cross-platform-thumbnail-generation-and-image-manipulation-i/191357 "2010-07-10T06:13:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![murfhy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@murfhy](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/murfhy)\
**Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 6:13am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/smartimage-0-0-4-simple-yet-powerful-cross-platform-thumbnail-generation-and-image-manipulation-i/191357/1 "2010-07-10T06:13:30Z")

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“It’s like a Swiss Army Knife for images, but one of those tiny ones you  
can  
keep on your keychain” AND YES, it works with Rails!

SmartImage is an image processing/compositing/thumbnailing Ruby with the  
following design goals:

- Completely seamless installation and usage across all Ruby  
implementations, with an emphasis on MRI and JRuby
- Expose a small but powerful and easy-to-understand API
- Easy to extend with support for multiple image compositing backends  
(presently RMagick and Java Graphics2D)

That’s cool, so what can it do?

- Create thumbnails (even in your Ruby on Rails application!)
- Scale images
- Composite multiple images into a single image
- Convert between various image formats (.png, .jpg, and .gif  
presently  
supported)
- Apply alpha masks to an image

Why should I use SmartImage instead of RMagick, ImageScience, etc?

- You want a more powerful and more cross-platform library than  
ImageScience
- You want a library with a less mind-bogglingly bloated API than  
RMagick
- You’re considering a move to an alternative Ruby implementation  
like  
JRuby and want an image library that works seamlessly between MRI,  
JRuby,  
and other Ruby implementations

–

v0.0.4 release notes:

- Fixed bug in processing alpha channel of JRuby canvas objects when  
saving .jpgs, causing color channel corruption.
- Fixed bug in SmartImage.thumbnail\_file where images are always  
saved as  
.pngs regardless of the specified file extension.