ImageMagick 6.2.8 comes with RHEL5.  This is pretty ancient in terms of being able to do some more advanced manipulations, like -kerning, -distort, etc…

As it turns out, ImageMagick publishes their own RPM for RHEL.  But if you try to just install it directly, you get something like this:

[root@boss ~]# rpm -Uvh http://www.imagemagick.org/download/linux/CentOS/x86_64/ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64.rpm
Retrieving http://www.imagemagick.org/download/linux/CentOS/x86_64/ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
libHalf.so.4()(64bit) is needed by ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64
libIex.so.4()(64bit) is needed by ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64
libIlmImf.so.4()(64bit) is needed by ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64
libImath.so.4()(64bit) is needed by ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64
libfftw3.so.3()(64bit) is needed by ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64
libgs.so.8()(64bit) is needed by ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64
libjasper.so.1()(64bit) is needed by ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64
liblcms.so.1()(64bit) is needed by ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64
libltdl.so.3()(64bit) is needed by ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64
liblzma.so.0()(64bit) is needed by ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64
librsvg-2.so.2()(64bit) is needed by ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64
libwmflite-0.2.so.7()(64bit) is needed by ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64

The answer is – use yum to take care of it:

As root, download the correct RPM from the ImageMagick site.  Then uninstall the system ImageMagick.  Then install this one.

http://www.imagemagick.org/script/binary-releases.php

wget http://www.imagemagick.org/download/linux/CentOS/x86_64/ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64.rpm
yum erase ImageMagick</p><p>yum install --nogpgcheck ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64.rpm

Note: because the version # is beyond the one shipped with RHEL, it will not be updated automatically.  You will need to monitor ImageMagick for security updates and install them yourself.

Note: this is not recommended — replacing a RHEL package.  But sometimes it is needed.

wget http://www.imagemagick.org/download/linux/CentOS/x86_64/ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64.rpm
yum erase ImageMagick
yum install --nogpgcheck ImageMagick-6.7.9-6.x86_64.rpm