Renaming convert.exe to imconvert.exe

Questions and postings pertaining to the usage of ImageMagick regardless of the interface. This includes the command-line utilities, as well as the C and C++ APIs. Usage questions are like "How do I use ImageMagick to create drop shadows?".
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el_supremo
Posts: 1015
Joined: 2005-03-21T21:16:57-07:00

Post by el_supremo »

By default the binaries install in C:\Program Files in a directory with a name like ImageMagick-6.3.1-Q8.
convert.exe will be in that directory.


Pete
JoaCHIP
Posts: 37
Joined: 2004-12-21T04:22:18-07:00
Location: Copenhagen

Re: Renaming convert.exe to imconvert.exe

Post by JoaCHIP »

Solution:
Right-click My Computer, go to "Properties" -> "Advanced" -> "Environment Variables" -> find "Path" under System Variables and Edit it. Make sure that C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-6.3.1-Q8 is somewhere in the path, but not before C:\WINNT or C:\WINDOWS, as this will theoretically slow down system performance. You may need to log off and then on again, for this to work.

Why this is a tricky subject:
The official ImageMagick installation has one issue: The name "convert.exe" is a system command. When you install ImageMagick, two somewhat unfortunate things happen:

1) ImageMagick inserts itself at the beninning of the path, instead of at the end like most other applications do. This theoretically degrades the speed of Windows.

2) This way ImageMagick overrides the "convert.exe" command, which means Windows can no longer convert FAT partitions into NTFS.

It is sad that this issue has still not been addressed. I guess the dev team are afraid of changing this at such a late phase in development. On the other hand, they seem to be ready to take responsability of altering everyone's operating systems, which i personally would never feel comfortable doing on such a large scale. I wonder if this will ever change?
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