[defen]

If you use CoreImage you get a ton of GPU-optimized filters for free, plus you can compose them at very little cost. For example if you wanted to crop, scale, rotate, and guassian blur an image, you can do that with one pass through the GPU instead 4.

[Keyframe]

I think ImageMagick also supports GPU/OpenCL if you compile it in.

[shiven]

As kogir mentioned elsewhere in the thread, ImageMagick is not designed to be used as a long running process, it will destroy RAM and likely lead to stability issues.

I think with OSX they used the right tool for the right job, because, as always, there is never a perfect solution to any problem on the trilateral axis (good/fast/cheap).

[KaiserPro]

I still don't understand this, why would you keep imageMgick running for more than one image?

[Keyframe]

Destroy RAM? What?

[shiven]

I know! I was being hyperbolic, but you get the idea :-) Memory leaks are almost the same thing, perhaps worse. You can always change a stick of RAM, but chasing down memory leaks, that's more than a 5 min job!