ImageMagick: Command-line Tools: Composite

Use the composite program overlaps one image over another. See Command Line Processing for advice on how to structure your composite command or see below for example usages of the command.

Example Usage

We list a few examples of the composite command here to illustrate its usefulness and ease of use. To get started, lets overlay a letter over a a rose:

composite -gravity center smile.gif  rose: rose-over.png

over

You can create three-dimensional effect with the Atop:

  convert -size 70x70 xc:none -fill red -draw 'circle 35,35 10,30' red-circle.png
  convert -size 70x70 xc:none -draw 'circle 35,35 35,20' -negate -channel A -gaussian 0x8 white-highlight.png
  composite -compose atop -geometry -13-17 white-highlight.png red-circle.png red-ball.png

atop

You can find additional examples of using composite in Examples of ImageMagick Usage. You can find out more about them and the mathematics by looking at SVG Alpha Compositing

Option Summary

The composite command recognizes these options. Click on an option to get more details about how that option works.

Option	Description
-affine matrix	affine transform matrix
-authenticate value	decrypt image with this password
-blend geometry	blend images
-blue-primary point	chromaticity blue primary point
-channel type	apply option to select image channels
-colors value	preferred number of colors in the image
-colorspace type	alternate image colorspace
-comment string	annotate image with comment
-compose operator	set image composite operator
-compress type	image compression type
-debug events	display copious debugging information
-define format:option	define one or more image format options
-density geometry	horizontal and vertical density of the image
-depth value	image depth
-displace geometry	shift image pixels defined by a displacement map
-dissolve value	dissolve the two images a given percent
-dither	apply Floyd/Steinberg error diffusion to image
-encoding type	text encoding type
-endian type	endianness (MSB or LSB) of the image
-extract geometry	extract area from image
-filter type	use this filter when resizing an image
-font name	render text with this font
-geometry geometry	perferred size or location of the image
-gravity type	horizontal and vertical text placement
-green-primary point	chromaticity green primary point
-help	print program options
-interlace type	type of image interlacing scheme
-label name	assign a label to an image
-level value	adjust the level of image contrast
-limit type value	pixel cache resource limit
-log format	format of debugging information
-matte	store matte channel if the image has one
-monitor	monitor progress
-monochrome	transform image to black and white
-negate	replace every pixel with its complementary color
-page geometry	size and location of an image canvas (setting)
-profile filename	add, delete, or apply an image profile
-quality value	JPEG/MIFF/PNG compression level
-quiet	suppress all error or warning messages
-red-primary point	chromaticity red primary point
-rotate degrees	apply Paeth rotation to the image
-sampling-factor geometry	horizontal and vertical sampling factor
-scene value	image scene number
-set attribute value	set an image attribute
-sharpen geometry	sharpen the image
-size geometry	width and height of image
-stegano offset	hide watermark within an image
-strip	strip image of all profiles and comments
-support factor	resize support: > 1.0 is blurry, < 1.0 is sharp
-thumbnail geometry	create a thumbnail of the image
-tile	repeat composite operation across and down image
-transform	affine transform image
-treedepth value	color tree depth
-type type	image type
-units type	the units of image resolution
-unsharp geometry	sharpen the image
-verbose	print detailed information about the image
-version	print version information
-virtual-pixel method	access method for pixels outside the boundaries of the image
-watermark geometry	percent brightness and saturation of a watermark
-white-point point	chromaticity white point
-white-threshold value	forces all pixels above the threshold into white
-write filename	write images to this file