It’s been a while since I wrote one of these chapter summaries here, and the reason for that is that I’ve been busy writing chapters, attending conferences, caring for a sick wife, and stuff like that. The book is still pretty much on track (I’m currently running about a week behind on the chapter deadlines, but I think I can have the whole thing done by the overall deadline).
Chapter 4 is an interesting one as it discusses all the tools which aren’t going to be covered elsewhere in the book. The reality of ImageMagick is that 95% of the functionality is exposed in the convert command, so you can discuss most things there. There are however some cool things which happen in commands of their own, and those are the things discussed in this chapter. The chapter is so early on in the book because I don’t want to give the impression that ImageMagick is a one trick pony, and because any book claiming to be a complete coverage of ImageMagick really does have to discuss them.
I wont go into a blow by blow account of what commands are covered, as that would be quite dull to read. Let’s just leave it as “the rest”.