Since the default version of ImageMagick installed by yum on CentOS 5.5 is  6.2.something, and you want to be able to do all the cool stuff that ImageMagick 6.5.* and 6.6.* can do, you’re gonna have to compile it from source yourself. Don’t worry – it’s easy, and it works.

First, if you’ve already installed it via yum, remove the outdated version with:

yum remove ImageMagick

Next, download the latest version of ImageMagick from your favorite download location (I downloaded ImageMagick- 6.6.0-10.tar.gz) and then save it in /usr/local/src.

Before you attempt to build it, however, you need to install all the required libraries. This should do the trick:

yum install bzip2-devel freetype-devel ghostscript-devel libjpeg-devel libpng-devel libtiff-devel tcl-devel

Now use tar zxvf to extract the ImageMagick package you downloaded, cd into the source directory, then type:

configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-bzlib=yes --with-fontconfig=yes --with-freetype=yes --with-gslib=yes --with-gvc=yes --with-jpeg=yes --with-jp2=yes --with-png=yes --with-tiff=yes

then:

make clean

That will take a while, but when it’s finished do:

make install

And now you’re running a current version of ImageMagick on CentOS 5.5!