Use the `compare` program to mathematically and visually annotate the difference between an image and its reconstruction. See Command Line Processing for advice on how to structure your `compare` command or see below for example usages of the command.

## Example Usage

We list a few examples of the `compare` command here to illustrate its usefulness and ease of use. To get started, lets compare an image to one thats been sharpened:

      convert rose.jpg -sharpen 0x1 reconstruct.jpg
      compare rose.jpg reconstruct.jpg difference.png

The red areas of the difference image show which pixels were affected by the image sharpening, whereas, white is areas that were untouched by the sharpening process

In addition to the visual interpretation of the difference in an image and its reconstruction, we report a mathematical measure of the difference :

      compare -metric PSNR rose.jpg reconstruct.jpg difference.png
      29.5615 dB

You can find additional examples of using `compare` in Graphics from the Command Line. Further discussion is available in More Graphics from the Command Line and Examples of ImageMagick Usage.

## Option Summary

The `compare` command recognizes these options. Click on an option to get more details about how that option works.

Option | Description
--- | ---
-alpha | activate, deactivate, reset, or set the alpha channel
-authenticate value | decrypt image with this password
-channel type | apply option to select image channels
-colorspace type | set image colorspace
-debug events | display copious debugging information
-define format:option | define one or more image format options
-density geometry | horizontal and vertical density of the image
-depth value | image depth
-extract geometry | extract area from image
-fuzz distance | colors within this distance are considered equal
-help | print program options
-identify | identify the format and characteristics of the image
-interlace type | type of image interlacing scheme
-limit type value | pixel cache resource limit
-log format | format of debugging information
-metric type | measure differences between images with this metric
-profile filename | add, delete, or apply an image profile
-quality value | JPEG/MIFF/PNG compression level
-quantize colorspace | reduce image colors in this colorspace
-quiet | suppress all warning messages
-sampling-factor geometry | horizontal and vertical sampling factor
-seed value | seed a new sequence of pseudo-random numbers
-set attribute value | set an image attribute
-size geometry | width and height of image
-transparent-color color | transparent color
-verbose | print detailed information about the image
-version | print version information
-virtual-pixel method | access method for pixels outside the boundaries of the image

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