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Should I use ImageMagick, or GD2, with ImageAPI in Drupal? What are the pros and cons?

Adrian Toman
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sprugman
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2 Answers2

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ImageMagick

  • is faster
  • can handle many more formats
  • the imagick binary works outside PHP's memory limit (As far as I know - please correct me if I'm wrong)
  • can at least get something out of a CMYK file (though the result often looks like someone puked on your source image, colour profile handling is terrible)
  • has no problems resizing transparent GIFs which was an issue in some versions of GD
  • is better and more consistent when rendering text from TrueType or other fonts - no hassle with different versions of FreeType that render the same font in a subtly different way.

On the downside, it is not available everywhere and as @Nicholas Goy says, a heavy dependency. But when I have the choice, I use ImageMagick.

Pekka
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  • +1 - apart from the dependency/availability problem, I'd always go with ImageMagick, especially because of the better performance. – Henrik Opel Nov 08 '09 at 14:56
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If you can avoid ImageMagick, then avoid it.

ImageMagick is a heavy dependency that might not be present everywhere, while GD is more often available.

As for the drupal specific question, I don't know how it integrates with either, so just take my advice as a deployment consideration.