Questions and postings pertaining to the usage of ImageMagick regardless of the interface. This includes the command-line utilities, as well as the C and C++ APIs. Usage questions are like "How do I use ImageMagick to create drop shadows?".
Without the external loop, I think IM convert will try to read all the images into memory and process them all, thus doubling or tripling the memory usage. You may be running out of memory and thus IM using disk space to supplement. With the loop, it will only read one image, process it and then write it, so the memory requirements are much smaller.
I would also assume that the second cmd is first putting all input images in memory.
there is probably no way to hint the first command to behave memory-wise like the second for loop command?
Since of a stream pipeline?
I would also assume that the second cmd is first putting all input images in memory.
No, then second command with the loop only processes one image at a time and thus only one image in memory at a time (plus any intermediates needed for processing and the output). I think the first command tries to read all the images first before processing each one.
