Painting the Web

Programming with ImageMagick and IMagick

Most, if not all, of the ImageMagick functionality is available via a language-based API for languages such as Ruby, Python, Perl, C, List, C++, and even Pascal. There are two ImageMagick interface libraries for PHP, and I'm going to take a quick look at one, IMagick. The last chapter in this book has further examples of using both PHP/GD and IMagick for creating dynamic images.

Chances are good that, unlike GD, your hosting solution doesn't have support for IMagick, which does need to be compiled into your version of PHP. However, if you ask nice and promise your host not to abuse the privilege (by blurring thousands of 1, 600-pixel-wide PNG files), they might install it for your use. At a minimum, do try to install it locally on your machine.

Unfortunately, IMagick is not simple to install and comes with little documentation. However, with the new, more stable release of version 2.0 in October of 2007, I'm hoping that increased interest in the product will drive out simpler installation and documentation.

Tip

The source for IMagick can be found at http://pecl.php.net/package/imagick. There are installation instructions in the file named INSTALL, and at the PHP.net site, at http://us.php.net/manual/en/imagick.install.php. Windows-built libraries are also available. The documentation is very limited, but the class methods and parameters are at least described at http://us2.php.net/imagick. The creator of the extension, Mikko Koppanen, does have ...