keep running out of memory!

[magick]

If you have an older version of ImageMagick try upgrading. If you are using a recent version and are reading GIF images wait for the 6.2.7-2 release in a few days. We have a patch for a small GIF memory leak.

[magick]

ImageMagick only controls memory usage for the pixel cache. If you are doing color reduction, for example, ImageMagick will allocate as much memory as it needs without regard to the resource limits. You can track usage by setting the MAGICK_DEBUG environment variable to 'all'. We have a new architecture document that discusses the pixel cache in detail at http://www.imagemagick.org/script/architecture.php.

[magick]

MagickCompareImages() returns a wand so you must destroy it to avoid a memory leak:

• compare_wand = MagickCompareImages(iwand_1, wand_2, MeanSquaredErrorMetric, &distortion);
  ...
  DestroyMagickWand(compare_wand);