title: Practical Imagemagick stack (combined) complex commands
body: <p>I want a combined command that can perform the following task in single execution. I searched the internet, but hardly found any tutorial that guide us to write any stack command. I can found single command for each operation, such as <code>-composite</code>, <code>-blur</code>, etc, and I know I can pipe the command as such</p>
  <pre><code>convert ... mpr:- | convert ... mpr:- | ... | convert ... png:-
  </code></pre>
  <p>However, I want a combined command that use <code>\( ... \)</code> and <code>mpr:{label}</code> since this will increase the performance as all operations are executed in single process (pipeline in shell can degrade the performance, and the process sequence is required to be in order).</p>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/bGcFA.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/bGcFA.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
  <p>The process sequence as such:</p>
  <ol>
  <li><p>put <code>flower.png</code> on top of the <code>frame.png</code> -&gt; <code>mpr:framedFlower</code></p>
  </li>
  <li><p>put <code>mpr:framedFlower</code> on top of the <code>background.png</code> -&gt; <code>mpr:out2</code></p>
  </li>
  <li><p>blur the <code>heart.png</code>, right-gradient-transparent the <code>smiley.png</code> and put both image on top of <code>mpr:out2</code> -&gt; <code>mpr:out3</code></p>
  </li>
  <li><p>annotate the <code>mpr:out3</code> with &quot;Hello world&quot; (placement=bottom) -&gt; png:-</p>
  <p>I don't include the commands that I have tried because they are too messy and it will be an insult to those users who read it. I tried for many hours, but can't get it done. Please advise.</p>
  </li>
  </ol>