ImageMagick includes a number of command-line utilities for manipulating images. Most of you are probably accustomed to editing images one at a time with a graphical user interface (GUI) with such programs as Gimp or Photoshop. However, a GUI is not always convenient. Suppose you want to process an image dynamically from a web script or you want to apply the same operations to many images or repeat a specific operation at different times to the same or different image. For these types of operations, the command-line image processing utility is appropriate.
The ImageMagick command-line tools exit with a status of 0 if the command line arguments have a proper syntax and no problems are encountered. Expect a descriptive message and an exit status of 1 if any exception occurs such as improper syntax, a problem reading or writing an image, or any other problem that prevents the command from completing successfully.
Here is a short description for each command-line tool. Click on the program name to get details about the program usage and a list of command-line options that alters how the program behaves. If you are just getting acquainted with ImageMagick, start with the magick program. Be sure to peruse Anthony Thyssen's tutorial on how to use ImageMagick utilities to images from the command-line.
stream desirable when working with large images or when you require raw pixel components.