[elliottkember]

Sure. The difference is that with ImageMagick is getting all the flags right. Not to put down a powerful tool, but it isn't exactly memorable. In a script you can describe what's happening and customise it at any point without in-depth knowledge of the tool, and with a friendly CLI environment. I'd rather write 5 lines of Ruby than read up on the ImageMagick flags.

[rlpb]

I'd rather look up the ImageMagick flags and write a simple 5 line shell wrapper for my specific use case than learn an API and write Ruby.