38.13 Images

To display an image in an Emacs buffer, you must first create an image descriptor, then use it as a display specifier in the display property of text that is displayed (see section 38.12 The display Property). Like the display property, this feature is available starting in Emacs 21.

Emacs can display a number of different image formats; some of them are supported only if particular support libraries are installed on your machine. The supported image formats include XBM, XPM (needing the libraries libXpm version 3.4k and libz), GIF (needing libungif 4.1.0), Postscript, PBM, JPEG (needing the libjpeg library version v6a), TIFF (needing libtiff v3.4), and PNG (needing libpng 1.0.2).

You specify one of these formats with an image type symbol. The image type symbols are xbm, xpm, gif, postscript, pbm, jpeg, tiff, and png.

Variable: image-types

This variable contains a list of those image type symbols that are supported in the current configuration.

38.13.1 Image Descriptors		How to specify an image for use in :display.
38.13.2 XBM Images		Special features for XBM format.
38.13.3 XPM Images		Special features for XPM format.
38.13.4 GIF Images		Special features for GIF format.
38.13.5 Postscript Images		Special features for Postscript format.
38.13.6 Other Image Types		Various other formats are supported.
38.13.7 Defining Images		Convenient ways to define an image for later use.
38.13.8 Showing Images		Convenient ways to display an image once it is defined.
38.13.9 Image Cache		Internal mechanisms of image display.