Imagemagick, command line, and Windows OS question.

[earlybird]

Hi,
 I tried to learn a little bit about Imagemagick today. The idea of doing some tasks without launching a large footprint application seemed interesting.
 I do not use command line very often but I figured out how to call the command I was interested in.

 My question is about the nomenclature of commands. I expected to have to identify a command with nomenclature that seemed exceptionally unique to Imagemagick but instead the command terms seem rather common.

 For example; With a command such as "convert", a command that is already part of Windows, how do I know that some function(s) may not have been conflicted by the install of Imagemagick?

 I guess I expected that Imagemagicks commands would seem unique. For example "Imagemagick.convert" might seem to be a more unique choice of nomenclature than Imagemagick's sharing of the use of "convert" with Windows.

 I suspect that my concerns are a knee jerk reaction based on unfamiliarity with command prompt, but it seems that I am just crossing my fingers that the parameters are not in conflict with other functionality scattered throughout my install. I guess I have long assumed that the many GUI based programs I have installed have unique identifiers that prevent this sort of concern.

 Any thoughts?

 Thank you.

[howardm]

It depends on where the ImageMagick installer installed everything.  Most of the time (and I'm not speaking directly about Windows since I'm not a Win. user), it clusters all of its executables and support files under a single common subdirectory.  Then you need to add that to your search path....

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000549.htm

It would be pretty poor form for it to try to install its stuff in places where Windows stashes its stuff because yes, it would step on them and cause various grief.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

It depends on where the ImageMagick installer installed everything.  Most of the time (and I'm not speaking directly about Windows since I'm not a Win. user), it clusters all of its executables and support files under a single common subdirectory.  Then you need to add that to your search path....

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000549.htm

Howard is correct. The ImageMagick installer program has an option to adjust the "Path" environment variable with the 'path' to ImageMagick's latest installed location automatically, in order to have control over the precedence of such potentially conflicting commands.

BTW, in the new ImageMagick version 7, which is also available as an HDRI binary that allows floating point calculations, the 'convert' command is replaced by the 'magick' command, even less likely to cause conflicts, regardless of the given path priority.

Cheers,
Bart

[earlybird]

...BTW, in the new ImageMagick version 7, which is also available as an HDRI binary that allows floating point calculations, the 'convert' command is replaced by the 'magick' command, even less likely to cause conflicts, regardless of the given path priority.

This is welcome news. I was using the latest Windows download as available yesterday: ImageMagick-7.0.1-3-Q16-x64-dll.exe and "convert" worked for me. I was following a tutorial so did not know of the new "magick" commands. Perhaps they have added the "magick" commands while retaining the older commands? If so, this would not seem to allay my fears but it does seem like a step towards addressing the concerns I have.

[earlybird]

It depends on where the ImageMagick installer installed everything.  Most of the time (and I'm not speaking directly about Windows since I'm not a Win. user), it clusters all of its executables and support files under a single common subdirectory.  Then you need to add that to your search path....

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000549.htm

It would be pretty poor form for it to try to install its stuff in places where Windows stashes its stuff because yes, it would step on them and cause various grief.

Thank you.

I think the installer set the paths ok, at least to the extent that commands made in the Win Command Prompt can locate and execute the Imagemagick functions.

The Installer did place all, or most, of the support files in a unique directory: C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-7.0.1-Q16 so it is unlikely that other applications' support files got overwritten.

What does seem likely is that the installer can introduce conflicts in the registry, however after a quick look at a hundred or so instances of the use of the term "convert" in my registry I see that all but a core Windows formatting function and Imagemagick have added descriptors that differentiate the uses. It seems like poor form to have just used a common command term that overlaps with other uses, but it also seems like so few other installs take this chance that it will not be a problem. The convert command has to be qualified with further statements so there almost no likely hood that two different applications will use the same actual string.

I normally make a disk image backup between installs of apps, but I casually assumed that Imagemagick was made by computer geeks and that it would be a simple and clean install. I will assume that I am imagining problems that have not occurred, but I am glad to learn that the program is migrating to the use of a more unique command nomenclature such as "magick".

Thank you for your suggestion.

[howardm]

I think IM is quite 'mature' (ie. old) and was originally done for Unix/Linux so that sort of thing is less of an issue and to my knowledge, none of the IM commands would step on a native command.  As always, Windows introduces its own issues

[alain]

Hi

I've seen that there are versions that use the GPU, but I don't find those for windows.
Any pointers?  (for a recent version 6).