Why does my system say convert: command not found?

ImageMagick 7 renamed the tool to magick. Use magick input.jpg output.png instead. Run magick -version to confirm which version you have.

What is the difference between magick and convert?

They are the same program. convert is the ImageMagick 6 name, retained in IM7 as a deprecated shim that prints a warning and is sometimes not installed at all.

Why does convert give me errors about disk volumes on Windows?

Windows has its own convert.exe in System32 for converting FAT to NTFS. If it comes first in your PATH you are running that instead of ImageMagick. Use magick.

convert: command not found (or: convert is deprecated in IMv7)

ImageMagick 7 renamed convert to magick. How to tell which version you have, the full IM6 to IM7 command translation, and the Windows convert.exe name clash.

You copied a command from a tutorial and got one of these:

bash: convert: command not found
convert: the convert command is deprecated in IMv7, use "magick" instead

Or, on Windows, something completely baffling about disk volumes.

What changed

ImageMagick 7 consolidated the old family of binaries into a single magick entry point. convert still exists in most IM7 builds as a compatibility shim that prints a deprecation warning — and some distributions no longer install it at all.

Nearly every ImageMagick tutorial written before 2021 uses convert, which is why this is the most common first error people hit.

Which version do you have?

magick -version     # prints something → you are on IM7
convert -version    # only this works  → you are on IM6

Translation table

ImageMagick 6	ImageMagick 7
`convert in.jpg out.png`	`magick in.jpg out.png`
`identify in.jpg`	`magick identify in.jpg`
`mogrify -resize 50% *.jpg`	`magick mogrify -resize 50% *.jpg`
`montage *.jpg sheet.jpg`	`magick montage *.jpg sheet.jpg`
`composite a.png b.png o.png`	`magick composite a.png b.png o.png`
`compare a.png b.png d.png`	`magick compare a.png b.png d.png`

The options themselves are almost entirely unchanged, so in practice you are just swapping the program name.

The Windows trap

Windows ships its own convert.exe in System32 — it converts FAT volumes to NTFS. If ImageMagick's directory comes later in your PATH than System32, typing convert runs the Microsoft tool instead, and you get errors about drive letters and file systems that have nothing to do with images.

This name collision is part of why IM7 renamed things. On Windows, always use magick.

Installing ImageMagick 7

brew install imagemagick                    # macOS — installs IM7
dnf install ImageMagick                     # Fedora — IM7
pacman -S imagemagick                       # Arch — IM7

Debian and Ubuntu still ship ImageMagick 6 in their default repositories under the package name imagemagick. Ubuntu 24.04 and later also offer imagemagick-7.q16. Otherwise, the AppImage from imagemagick.org is the simplest way to get IM7 without building:

wget https://imagemagick.org/archive/binaries/magick
chmod +x magick
./magick -version

Making old scripts work on IM7

If you have scripts full of convert calls, an alias covers interactive use but not scripts:

alias convert='magick'

For scripts, a shim on your PATH is more reliable:

printf '#!/bin/sh\nexec magick "$@"\n' > /usr/local/bin/convert
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/convert

Other real differences in IM7

IM7 works in linear RGB by default, so identical flags can produce slightly different pixel output than IM6.
-crop 16:9 with an aspect ratio works on IM7 only.
IM7 has broader -define support for AVIF and HEIC.
Percent escapes in -format strings behave more consistently in IM7.