easy image manipulation using imagemagick

posted: Jun 2, 2021

I often use Imagemagick for simple image-manipulation from the commandline. To use the program run the command “convert”.

The following is a collection of useful commands for simple image manipulation like resizing, cropping or conversion from one format to another. This collection exists, because I realized that I had to re-google some commands everytime I was using them.

conversion between formats

$ convert input_image.png -quality 90 output_image.jpg
# or set output format through "-format"-option
$ convert input_image.png -quality 90 -format jpg output_image

resize an image

# resize with relative size argument.
$ convert input_image.png -resize 50% smaller_output_image.png
# resize with absolute size argument.
$ convert input_image.png -resize 300 output_image.png
# resize with absolute size argument, disregard aspect ration.
$ convert input_image.png -resize 300x500 stretched_output_image.png

cropping images

# cropping an image to 100x50 with an offset 25 pixels from the left and 10 pixels from the top
$ convert -crop 100x50+25+10 input_image.png output_image.png

reduzing the number of colors

# reducing the number of colors to 10
$ convert -colors 10 input_image.png output_image.png