-ping option
This option is also recommended as it prevents the entire image from being loaded to memory, as mentioned at: https://stackoverflow.com/a/22393926/895245:
identify -ping -format '%w %h' image.jpg
man identify says:
-ping efficiently determine image attributes
We can for example test it out with some of the humongous images present on Wikimedia’s “Large image” category e.g. this ultra high resolution image of Van Gogh’s Starry Night which Wikimedia claims is 29,696 × 29,696 pixels, file size: 175.67 MB:
wget -O image.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project-x0-y0.jpg
time identify -ping -format '%w %h' image.jpg
time identify -format '%w %h' image.jpg
I however observed that -ping at least in this case did not make any difference on the time, maybe it only matters for other image formats?
Tested on ImageMagick 6.9.10, Ubuntu 20.04.
See also: Fast way to get image dimensions (not filesize)