Usually when we talk about programs for editing images we think to graphic programs such as The Gimp or photoshop, but they are not the only alternative.

There's nothing quite like command-line tools for handling large batches of tasks, and image manipulations are no exception. Web developers and administrators will appreciate the ability to handle large numbers of files easily, either at the command line or in scripts.

You can use the convert command that comes with ImageMagick to extract parts of an image.

The composite command from ImageMagick provides an easy way to watermark images. Without too much work you can write a script to do batch processing of your images. This way you can watermark a whole directory of images at once.

It can be used from the command line for quick needs or built into a more complex software suite. This guide will cover some of the most “magical” features of ImageMagick and provide examples of how to use it to solve everyday tasks.

images2mpg, a simple utility that's part of the KDE Image Plugin Interface (KIPI), lets you create an MPEG file from image files. Relying on a handful of command-line tools including the ImageMagick suite and mjpegtools, images2mpg creates wonderful videos from your images and even lets you insert your favorite song as the background. It supports SVCD, DVD, VCD, and XVCD video formats.

In my last post I showed how you can add your own custom functions to the GNOME file manager with Nautilus Actions. This script will batch watermark images with Nautilus Actions and ImageMagick. It also works with KDE's Dolphin custom actions as well as the command line.

In this tutorial I will show you several simple ways of creating ISO images with Ubuntu, from doing it with graphical applications included in the repositories or by using just the command-line. Each method below will get the work done, and you can start burning your images to a CD or DVD in no time.

Learn how to use the Linux command line and some basic Bash scripting techniques to draw lines and text on images using ImageMagick. And create a pixel ruler along the way.