Performance

A test to benchmark the performance of this module relative to alternatives.

Greater libvips performance can be expected with caching enabled (default) and using 8+ core machines, especially those with larger L1/L2 CPU caches.

The I/O limits of the relevant (de)compression library will generally determine maximum throughput.

Contenders

• jimp v1.6.0 - Image processing in pure JavaScript.
• imagemagick v0.1.3 - Supports filesystem only and “has been unmaintained for a long time”.
• gm v1.25.1 - Fully featured wrapper around GraphicsMagick’s gm command line utility, but “has been sunset”.
• sharp v0.34.0 / libvips v8.16.1 - Caching within libvips disabled to ensure a fair comparison.

Environment

AMD64

• AWS EC2 us-west-2 c7a.xlarge (4x AMD EPYC 9R14)
• Ubuntu 24.10 fad5ba7223f8
• Node.js 22.14.0

ARM64

• AWS EC2 us-west-2 c8g.xlarge (4x ARM Graviton4)
• Ubuntu 24.10 133f2e05cb69
• Node.js 22.14.0

Task: JPEG

Decompress a 2725x2225 JPEG image, resize to 720x588 using Lanczos 3 resampling (where available), then compress to JPEG at a “quality” setting of 80.

Note: jimp does not support Lanczos 3, bicubic resampling used instead.

Results: JPEG (AMD64)

Module	Input	Output	Ops/sec	Speed-up
jimp	buffer	buffer	2.35	1.0
imagemagick	file	file	10.51	4.5
gm	buffer	buffer	11.67	5.0
gm	file	file	11.75	5.1
sharp	stream	stream	60.72	25.8
sharp	file	file	62.37	26.5
sharp	buffer	buffer	65.15	27.7

Results: JPEG (ARM64)

Module	Input	Output	Ops/sec	Speed-up
jimp	buffer	buffer	2.13	1.0
imagemagick	file	file	12.95	6.1
gm	buffer	buffer	13.53	6.4
gm	file	file	13.52	6.4
sharp	stream	stream	46.58	21.9
sharp	file	file	48.42	22.7
sharp	buffer	buffer	50.16	23.6

Task: PNG

Decompress a 2048x1536 RGBA PNG image, premultiply the alpha channel, resize to 720x540 using Lanczos 3 resampling (where available), unpremultiply then compress as PNG with a “default” zlib compression level of 6 and without adaptive filtering.

Note: jimp does not support premultiply/unpremultiply.

Results: PNG (AMD64)

Module	Input	Output	Ops/sec	Speed-up
gm	file	file	8.66	1.0
imagemagick	file	file	8.79	1.0
jimp	buffer	buffer	11.26	1.3
sharp	file	file	27.93	3.2
sharp	buffer	buffer	28.69	3.3

Results: PNG (ARM64)

Module	Input	Output	Ops/sec	Speed-up
gm	file	file	9.65	1.0
imagemagick	file	file	9.72	1.0
jimp	buffer	buffer	10.68	1.1
sharp	file	file	23.90	2.5
sharp	buffer	buffer	24.48	2.5

Running the benchmark test

Requires Docker.

git clone https://github.com/lovell/sharp.git
cd sharp/test/bench
./run-with-docker.sh