This paper describes the VIPS image processing library and user-interface. VIPS is used in many museums and galleries in Europe, America and Australia for image capture, analysis and output. VIPS is popular because it is free, crossplatform, fast, and can manage images of unlimited size. It also has good support for color, an important feature in this sector. Its architecture will be illustrated through examples of its use in a range of museum-driven applications. VIPS is free software distributed under the LGPL license. Keyrords--Image-processing architecture, large images.