PNG to JPEG and how I loathe ImageMagick options

It’s frustrating how long it takes me to figure out how to do something in ImageMagick¹. I know full well it can do it, but the options are a maze that feels like I’ll have to get a post-graduate degree to understand.

I’m posting this as a public note-to-self as it may make the search easier for someone else.

To do a pretty decent job of converting a PNG-24 with varying transparency to a matted JPEG, you can run this command (substituting another color if you prefer):

convert file.png -background white -mosaic +matte file.jpg

The PNG/JPEG below were converted from the System Preferences 1024px icon on the command line; resized with sips (a default utility on OS X) and converted to matted JPEG with ImageMagick’s convert². Note that the drop shadow survived. Also note the the command isn’t ridiculously long. Much shorter, in fact, than the many I tried before that one.

That is all.

Nope, that’s not all: a note from Aaron McLeod about Ruby library image_sorcery just made my day. Maybe my week.