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Image processing

Some of the built-in plugins depend on external libraries for efficient image processing, most notably the social plugin to generate social cards, and the optimize plugin for applying image optimization. This guide explains how to install those libraries in different environments.

Dependencies

The libraries for image processing are entirely optional, and only need to be installed if you want to use the social plugin or the optimize plugin. The libraries are listed under the imaging extra:

pip install "mkdocs-material[imaging]"

This will install compatible versions of the following packages:

Cairo Graphics

Cairo Graphics is a graphics library and dependency of Pillow, which Material for MkDocs makes use of for generating social cards and performing image optimization. See the following section which explains how to install Cairo Graphics and its dependencies on your system:

=== ":material-apple: macOS"

Make sure [Homebrew] is installed, which is a modern package manager for
macOS. Next, use the following command to install all necessary
dependencies:

```
brew install cairo freetype libffi libjpeg libpng zlib
```

=== ":fontawesome-brands-windows: Windows"

As stated in the [installation guide], the easiest way to get up and running
with the [Cairo Graphics] library on Windows is by installing [GTK+]. You
can also download a precompiled [GTK runtime].

=== ":material-linux: Linux"

There are several package managers for Linux with varying availability per
distribution. The [installation guide] explains how to install the [Cairo
Graphics] library for your distribution:

=== ":material-ubuntu: Ubuntu"

    ```
    apt-get install libcairo2-dev libfreetype6-dev libffi-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev libz-dev
    ```

=== ":material-fedora: Fedora"

    ```
    yum install cairo-devel freetype-devel libffi-devel libjpeg-devel libpng-devel zlib-devel
    ```

=== ":fontawesome-brands-suse: openSUSE"

    ```
    zypper install cairo-devel freetype-devel libffi-devel libjpeg-devel libpng-devel zlib-devel
    ```

The following environments come with a preinstalled version of Cairo Graphics:

pngquant

pngquant is an excellent library for lossy PNG compression, and a direct dependency of the built-in optimize plugin. See the following section which explains how to install pngquant system:

=== ":material-apple: macOS"

Make sure [Homebrew] is installed, which is a modern package manager for
macOS. Next, use the following command to install all necessary
dependencies:

```
brew install pngquant
```

=== ":fontawesome-brands-windows: Windows"

Installing [pngquant] on Windows is a little more involved. The
[pngquant-winbuild] repository contains a guide on how to set up an
environment for building [pngquant] on Windows.

=== ":material-linux: Linux"

All popular Linux distributions, regardless of package manager, should
allow to install [pngquant] with the bundled package manager. For example,
on Ubuntu, [pngquant] can be installed with:

```
apt-get install pngquant
```

The same is true for `yum` and `zypper`.

The following environments come with a preinstalled version of pngquant: