Installing VIPS on Digital Ocean (Ubuntu 14). VIPS (http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk/) is super fast image processor that performs faster than anything else. Please read the comments for even quicker install

install.sh

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh forge@yourserverIP "cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"


ssh 'forge@yourserverIP'

mkdir vips
cd vips
wget -c http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk/supported/current/vips-7.38.5.tar.gz  
tar xzvf vips-7.38.5.tar.gz 
cd vips-7.38.5/

su - root

sudo dpkg --configure -a

sudo apt-get install pkg-config 

sudo apt-get install build-essential pkg-config glib-2.0 libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libfftw3-dev gettext libgtk2.0-dev python-dev liblcms1-dev liboil-dev libmagickwand-dev libopenexr-dev libcfitsio3-dev gobject-introspection flex bison

./configure && make && make install

echo "/usr/local/lib/" >> /etc/ld.so.conf.d/local.conf

sudo apt-get install libvips

cd ..
wget http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Lower_Manhattan_from_Staten_Island_Ferry_Corrected_Jan_2006.jpg
mv Lower_Manhattan_from_Staten_Island_Ferry_Corrected_Jan_2006.jpg image.jpg

vips dzsave image.jpg x --layout zoomify

Ubuntu

It looks like you can install a "usable" version (vs a development version) on Ubuntu by running:

# Install the base items
# alternatively install libvips37 - but I think they resolve to the same package ("latest")
$ sudo apt-get install libvips

# Install the CLI tool
# If you just install this, you will likely get libvips since its a dependency
$ sudo apt-get install libvips-tools  

More info on the vips package in Ubuntu here.

Language Bindings

• Python: It looks like Python's popular PIL library will use VIPS - PIL and Pillow are both popular Python image manipulation libraries. If I remember right, Pillow is still maintained, while PIL may not be.
• Ruby: Here's a ruby gem.
• NodeJS: Here's a NodeJS package.

Making use of this via a web service.

I'd imagine this is "easiest" via the NodeJS package, altho Node might not be the best use for this. I'm not sure if the package makes efficient use of the library - I'd imagine it's not actually done within V8 but via a spawned process or similar concept. I'm only pretending to know what I'm talking about, but the docs seem to support that.

I think it would be better if we add --no-install-recommends flag to avoid installing nip2 (recommends) package.

For comparison:

apt-get install libvips Need to get 58.7 MB of archives. Complete with unnecessary package like firefox. Why would I need firefox if this tools will be installed on the server?

apt-get install libvips --no-install-recommends Need to get 7,910 kB. Now that's better

Some libraries (ruby-vips) use dev instead of the main install.
use this if you are still having issues:
apt-get install libvips-dev