I’ve always been jealous of graphic artists. They juggle dozens of layers and composite images with ease with their fancy photoshops and gimps. I’ve tried several times to do some simple tasks with the Gimp and was defeated in each case. So I’ve found myself going hat in hand to the “graphics guy” (no slight intended to the ladies; I’ve just never worked with a female graphic artist) for even the simplest of buttons and on personal projects I’ve just had to do without.

I’ve used ImageMagick occasionally over the years for converting between formats and checking image sizes. I recently stumbled on this great set of examples by Anthony Thyssen of using ImageMagick for complex multi-step manipulations. When you add in a terrific set of Ruby bindings, the result is graphical independence for people such as myself.

While I’ve still got a long way to go before I master these new techniques, I have used them to generate a banner for this page and a few buttons for a work project. Here’s the source of my banner generating script and you can try it out by clicking the Change banner link at the top of the page. Expect the banner to become ever more decedent as I add tricks to my tool box.