Well, to cross out the first bullet, I can say that I use the full path and not the tilde when using the symlink approach. I used the tilde shorthand to explain where the symlink was pointing to.

To cross out the next 4 bullets I can say that open(PIC, '<', $pic) or die "hurr"; led to no deaths leading to me believe I am bad at installing modules :(.

Time to try reinstalling Image::Magick~

(The tilde was not shorthand this time. :P)

Update: Whoops, you updated your node adding even more bullets! (and removed one)! Is my open() success a false positive?

Updated update to be factually correct.