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This tutorial walks you through preparing product photos for an e-commerce site. You will resize images to consistent dimensions, strip metadata that leaks location and device info, add a watermark, convert to WebP for smaller files, and combine everything into a single reusable command. By the end, you will have a batch script that processes an entire folder of photos in one run.
This tutorial assumes you have ImageMagick installed and have run basic commands. If you haven’t, start with Getting started.
Shell: The first five numbered steps below use bash (Linux, macOS, or Git for Windows Git Bash). Line continuations use \ at the end of each line; PowerShell treats \ differently, so either paste each command as one long line (remove the backslashes and extra newlines) or use Step 6 for a PowerShell-native loop.

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Set up your working directory

Create a folder for this tutorial and add some test images:
If you have product photos on hand, copy them into originals/. If not, create three test images at different sizes to simulate real-world input:
These generate textured images at landscape (2400x1800), portrait (1800x2400), and square (2000x2000) dimensions. The exact content doesn’t matter for this tutorial. What matters is that they are larger than the 800x800 target and arrive at inconsistent sizes. Check their dimensions:
Real product photos from different cameras and photographers arrive at different sizes. This pipeline standardizes them.
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Step 1: Resize to consistent dimensions

E-commerce platforms typically need images at a fixed maximum size. Resize a single image to fit within 800x800 pixels:
Example identify line (dimensions in field 3; yours may differ slightly by build):
The third column 800x600 confirms your 2400×1800 source was shrunk to fit inside 800×800 (aspect ratio preserved). The resize step uses a trailing greater-than on the geometry so ImageMagick only shrinks: fit inside 800×800, keep aspect ratio, and never upscale a small source. Try the same resize on the other two images to see how portrait and square inputs behave.The Geometry syntax reference covers every modifier in detail.
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Step 2: Strip metadata

Photos from cameras and phones carry metadata that can include GPS coordinates, device info, and timestamps. For a public storefront, strip it:
You should still see the same geometry as the source (e.g. 800x600 after the earlier resize). Metadata is gone from the file; use magick identify -verbose step-stripped.jpg | head if you want to confirm profile/EXIF fields disappeared.
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Step 3: Add a watermark

Watermarking has two parts: creating the watermark image and compositing it onto the product photo.Create the watermark. This makes a transparent PNG with white text:
You now have a watermark.png with SAMPLE on a transparent canvas. PNG: writes a normal PNG; because the image still has an alpha channel from xc:none, transparency is kept. Use PNG32:watermark.png instead if you ever need to force a 32-bit RGBA file on disk (some older tools expect that explicit depth).Tweak the label: change the string in quotes, or adjust color, size, and font:
Use your own font name (see magick -list font) and point size so the watermark fits your product frame.Apply the watermark. Composite it onto a product photo, positioned in the bottom-right corner:
Example (geometry should match your resized photo; JPEG because this step still writes .jpg):
The -gravity SouthEast -geometry +20+20 places the watermark 20 pixels from the bottom-right edges.
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Step 4: Convert to WebP

WebP produces smaller files than JPEG at comparable visual quality. Convert an image and set the compression level:
Example (this step reads the original full-size JPEG, so dimensions stay large until Step 5):
ImageMagick determines the output format from the .webp extension. The -quality value controls lossy compression for that write; see -quality for how to choose numbers across JPEG and WebP.
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Step 5: Combine everything into one command

Each step you have learned so far is an operation that ImageMagick processes left to right. You can combine them all into a single magick call. In bash, \ must be the last character on a line; do not put inline # comments after a continuation backslash.Full pipeline (copy-paste):
Walk the combined command (read in order):
  1. Load: magick originals/input.jpg with a line continuation (backslash as the last character on the line) so the pipeline can span multiple lines.
  2. Resize (operator): -resize '800x800>' runs here: it shrinks large photos to fit inside the box while preserving aspect ratio, and it does not upscale smaller sources.
  3. Strip (operator): -strip removes EXIF, comments, and color profiles you usually do not want on public web assets, applied as soon as it is reached.
  4. Second input: watermark.png pushes a second image onto the stack so the next operators can composite it onto the base photo.
  5. Position: -gravity SouthEast -geometry +20+20 anchors the watermark 20px from the bottom-right edges of the resized photo.
  6. Composite (operator): -composite merges the overlay with the base image using the current gravity and geometry at this point in the command.
  7. Quality (setting): -quality 85 sets WebP compression for the next lossy write (this repo uses 85 as a shared default in examples; tune as needed; see -quality).
  8. Write: processed/input.webp is the output path; ImageMagick determines the encoder from the .webp extension.
See also the common options reference for deeper notes on these flags.Verify the result:
Example line:
The WEBP token and 800x600 (or your aspect-correct size) confirm the pipeline wrote a WebP at the expected dimensions. One command turns a raw product photo into a web-ready, watermarked, metadata-free WebP.
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Step 6: Batch-process a folder

Wrap the pipeline in a loop to process every image in the originals/ folder:
After the loop finishes, check the results:
Each output image fits within 800x800, has no metadata, carries a watermark, and is compressed as WebP.

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Clean up

Remove the intermediate test files you created during the tutorial:
Keep the watermark.png, originals/, and processed/ folders. The watermark and the batch script are reusable for future product photo batches.

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Next steps

This tutorial covered resizing with only-shrink geometry, stripping metadata with -strip, building a simple watermark with xc:none and -annotate, compositing with -gravity / -geometry / -composite, writing WebP with -quality, and chaining those pieces into one magick line. Here is where to go next: