Overlaying two images with automatic resize using ImageMagick

Michael Pliskin picture Michael Pliskin · Jan 26, 2011 · Viewed 18.7k times · Source

Is there are way to automatically resize the overlay image according to background size when overlaying images using ImageMagick? I am using the following code now:

composite overlay.jpeg background.jpeg result.jpeg

The problem is that sometimes overlay and background are of different sizes, and I'd like to resize overlay accordingly (keeping the aspect ratio) and place it to the center. Is there any way to do that?

Answer

mpenkov picture mpenkov · Jan 26, 2011

First of all, overlay and background do not need to be the same size for composite to work. For example, given these two images:

sydney.png (352x288):

sydney

jet2.png (128x129):

jet2

Try the following commands:

convert -size 352x288 -composite sydney.png jet2.png -geometry 64x64+176+144 -depth 8 test.png

convert -size 352x288 -composite sydney.png jet2.png -geometry 32x32+176+144 -depth 8 test.png
  • -size specifies the output image dimensions
  • -geometry specifies the dimensions and location of the foreground

This is what I get for the first command:

result

EDIT

Here's a bash script to do it all for you in one line:

#!/bin/bash
if [ -z "$3" ]
then
    echo "usage: $0 background.png foreground.png output.png"
    exit 1
fi
bg_size=`identify -format '%wx%h' "$1"`
convert -size $bg_size -composite "$1" "$2" -geometry $bg_size+0+0 -depth 8 "$3"