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      You are at:Home»Software»Raspbian»How to Display Images on Raspbian Command Line with fim
      fim rotated example photo

      How to Display Images on Raspbian Command Line with fim

      7
      By Matt on September 17, 2014 Raspbian, Tutorials & Help

      UPDATE: Unfortunately fim has been dropped from the Debian repository and as a result is no longer available in the latest version of Raspbian. Take a look at How to Display Images on Raspbian Command Line with fbi instead.

      If you are using your Pi to capture images using the camera it can be useful to display those images without launching a desktop environment. One of the ways of doing this is to use a utility called “fim”.

      fim is based on an image viewer called “fbi” and stands for “Fbi IMproved”.

      Note : It uses the system’s framebuffer to display images directly from the command line. For this reason it is best used when your Pi is directly connected to a monitor and keyboard.

      Install fim

      To install fim use the following commands :

      sudo apt-get update
      sudo apt-get -y install fim

      Use fim

      To display a single image with the “auto-zoom” option use :

      fim -a example.jpg

      Once displayed you can use various keyboard shortcuts to manipulate the image such as the r/R key to rotate :

      fim rotated example photo

      To display all the images in the current directory  use the following command :

      fim -a *.jpg

      The PageUp/PageDown keys can be used to cycle through the images selected by the “*.jpg” filter.

      ASCII Art

      If you use the “-t” option you can render the image in ASCII characters.

      To display the image as ASCII art you can use :

      fim -a -t example.jpg
      fim Ascii Art Example
      Do or do not. There is no try.

      OK so the last one is slightly less useful but might provide some light relief from the command line!

      Keyboard Controls

      While the image is displayed you can use the following keys :

      PageUp/Down      Prev/Next image
      +/-              Zoom in/out
      a                Autoscale
      w                Fit to width
      h                Fit to height
      j/k              Pan down/up
      f/m              flip/mirror
      R/r              Rotate 10 degrees CW/CCW
      ESC/q            Quit
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      7 Comments

      1. Private on September 18, 2014 3:54 am

        I missed that section where you point out fbi, so please ignore my earlier post. I using the following script called by rc.local on startup to show a slideshow of all image found on the first attached usb drive.


        #Create the mount point if it does not exist
        if [ ! -d /mnt/usb ];
        then
        echo Creating mount point
        mkdir -p /mnt/usb
        else
        echo Found existing mount point
        fi
        #Mount the device onto the mount point.
        if [ -b /dev/sda1 ]
        then
        echo Mounting usb device
        mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb 2>&1 >/dev/null
        fi
        #Start the slideshow
        if [ "$(ls -A /mnt/usb)" ]
        then
        echo Starting slideshow
        /usr/bin/fbi -m 1280x1024-75 -t 3 -a /mnt/usb/*.JPG
        else
        echo USB device not found. Resume normal operation
        fi

        Reply
      2. User on October 28, 2014 7:36 pm

        Hi, is there a way to set up a slideshow using fim? Or even set a time limit for displaying a particular pic? Suggestions for accomplishing the same using other packages are also welcome. Thanks.

        Reply
      3. William Smith on October 6, 2015 2:34 pm

        It looks like Jessie doesn’t (yet?) have fim, any idea where/how to build it from sources? fib is slow and buggy on a PiB2 running Jessie….

        Reply
      4. Broatcast on May 23, 2016 5:00 am

        You can directly install “fbi” using “aptitude install fbi” and use fbi for your need 😉

        Reply
      5. Andrew on June 18, 2016 11:48 am

        FIM seems to be missing from the current (as of June 2016) Raspbian packages and can’t be installed with apt-get as suggested in this article.

        Reply
        • Andrew on June 18, 2016 12:08 pm

          Others may find this useful as it describes why the package isn’t available and how to obtain the source and build it:

          http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/41213/unable-to-locate-fim-package

          Reply
      6. Jerry on July 7, 2019 8:20 am

        Hi.. i’m running FBI on raspbian lite and it works fine except it only loads the first 12 images..
        the images are on a remote nfs share, i dont know is thats the problem,
        but its mounted to /nfs/frame and all the images show up in ls

        Reply

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