Question

Having used PHP GD for some time I have decided to move to Imagemagick. The way of running it on the host is as follows:

$command = "/usr/local/bin/convert $commands";
exec($command);

Is there any way to be able to switch the implementation so that I can use the php Imagick extension (which seems more logical for me to code for)?

The site is hosted with Dreamhost.

Answer 1

I have lots of php with Imagemagick examples on my website and have started on some Imagick examples.

As you know you can run Imagemagick through exec() which is the way I do it as I think it is simpler and has access to all the Imagemagick operators included in your version.

There is Imagick built into php 5 which is slightly quicker than exec( ) but you will see from other posts it is not very well documented and quite hard to learn.

I write my code like this which has the benifit of echoing the $cmd and checking it is what you wanted when using variables in the code.

$cmd = " $input -resize 500x500 $output ";
exec(" convert $cmd ");