I am looking for a simple 2d graphics library for C. What do you recommend. Mainly I want to set pixels, draw lines, squres, circles etc...

Thanks.

I'd say use SDL + SDL_gfx. Modern, portable, easy to use.

Now I know some people are gonna recommend allegro ... no, just no.

Definitely SDL. You have to write your own pixel routine but its pretty easy.
Its fast and cross platform too

SDL_gfx lets you draw a 1x1 rectangle if you must have pixels.

or
have a look at CImg.h
yes it is a header ,but all the code needed is in it
http://cimg.sourceforge.net/
http://cimg.sourceforge.net/screenshots.shtml

CImg is interesting, but maybe they should call it C++Img because it's not C, it's C++. Any way to write C code using it ?

I think writing a pixel to the surface memory would have less overhead. Its so simple I don't know why more libraries don't support it

I think I will give SDL_gfx a try since so many recommendations, and maybe CImg.h since it seems so simple.

I know what you mean. I remember in Qbasic (sorry to bring up M$), it was just

Here is a simple pixel routine for SDL:
http://sdl.beuc.net/sdl.wiki/Pixel_Access

I've been using Fltk as a minimal replacement for Qt. No experience with SDL. I can say that I've run into questions for Fltk and asked them on stack overflow and gotten pretty prompt responses. Looks like it's under slow development.

What I like about it is similar to Qt, you take the source and build it on your target system. For me that's helpful since I swap between a variety of processor platforms.

I recommend XLib. You can set pixels and draw simple geometry, load images, et cetera.

fltk and qt are GUI toolkits NOT graphics libraries.

You can easily generate images in many different file formats, and I think most would call that 'graphics'. What kind(s) of applications are you trying to create? There are already many different types of graphics applications; which ones(s) most closely resemble what you are trying to achieve? 'Graphics' can mean many things to many people, and is far too vague to allow people to make really useful suggestions. Is it your intent to create images programatically? What kinds of images? How will they be displayed? Will the rendering and the creation aspects be part of your application? On what kinds of device(s) will you imagery be rendered. Images created for a low resolution screen may not render well on a high resolution printer, but there are ways to generate resolution-independent images. Or do you intend to create some kind of interactive GUI with your graphics? That is a whole other level of graphical programming. There exist many libraries and APIs to support the whole spectrum of graphical programming. Without narrowing down your scope quite a bit, the spectrum of possible answers is too large to fit into a reply here.

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I am not familiar with SDL. My one minute peek into SDL leads me to believe that it is a wrapper for OpenGL. Metaschima said that fltk and qt are GUI toolkits NOT graphics libraries. If you seriously interested in graphics programming, everything falls back onto OpenGL. It is directly supported by both NVIDIA and ATI, much to the discomfort of Microsoft (Not Invented Here). OpenGL Programming Guide (the Red Book) is all the tutorial that you will need to get started.

If you want to start programming 3D or highly graphics intensive 2D games, then OpenGL would be very useful. You can use OpenGL within SDL. I know some games have a checkbox for turning OpenGL support on and off in case your graphics card doesn't support it ... rare nowadays.