Last night, I run into memory issues with image sizer ( which I have used for quite some time). The folks at enginehosting thought it was mucking things up for me so I deleted it.  Then, I looked into switching to Image resizer but seems there are some issues with the ee 2.x version ( some folks have come up with a working solution).  My research today led me to phpThumb. I have been very surprised by the sheer versatility of it and what it can do.  I am wondering what the downsides are of phpThumb vs. the other well known image resizing tools.  e.g. What is its impact on server resources vs the others?

The memory restrictions issues have alot more to do with your server configuration and image library (GD vs ImageMagick) than the scripting in most cases. Even with the best image scaling script you can still hit the glass ceiling if your server is not allocated enough ram. I happen to run a mass-image hosting site, and had to learn the hard way that the amount of RAM needed for images over a certain size simply could not be resized conventionally (in some cases they must be sliced and diced). ImageMagick is the big gun in this field, but not all hosts have it installed by default (and installing it on some DVs is a pain). Using phpThumb without IM might not yield much better results for you (but would be worth a try). Do you have ImageMagick installed?

I ended up making a plugin for myself that uses ImageMagick exclusively, but you might feel more comfortable with phpThumb. For precaution’s sake you could also make sure your server memory limits are as high as possible in your php.ini (althought I’m not familiar with how phpThumb handles memory flow).

I am running an image heavy site - (photography site) and have run into all sorts of issues with the server. I am currently hosted on Enginehosting with a shared hosting plan, which understandably, has limitations on memory and a bunch of other things that is impacting my site usability.  My option here is perhaps to move to a dedicated hosting service, if I can afford it.

So I am interested in learning about your experiences and solutions. I am not sure if imageMagick is installed on enginehosting. ( and i know nothing about ImageMagick). How will it work in conjunction with phphumb?  I have come to like phpThumb quite a bit for the sheer number of options available.  Based on the shared hosting limitation, I have no control of the server memory allocation.  What is the performance of your ImageMagick plugin?  Any memory issues? Is it better than phpthumb?

btw - which hosting service and plan do you have?

ImageMagick is a library that must be installed at the server level (an alternative to GD library). Many shared hosting systems have it pre-installed. I do not know about EngineHosting. phpThumb uses both GD and ImageMagick (if available).

I mostly use a flock of Dedicated Virtual machines on MediaTemple for EE, but they take work to get ImageMagick installed and up to date (lots of muddling around with SSH), so I wouldn’t recommend that for most people.

hd  - 13 September 2010 05:01 PM

ImageMagick is a library that must be installed at the server level (an alternative to GD library). Many shared hosting systems have it pre-installed. I do not know about EngineHosting. phpThumb uses both GD and ImageMagick (if available).
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Is it possible to get phpthumb to use imagemagick? I assume it is a simple configuration change in my ee cp. will check. where does your custom plugin come in ?

phpThumb does use ImageMagick, automatically, if it is installed on the server.

My plugin is just a wrapper for ImageMagick, which is probably not what you need, you’d probably be better off using phpThumb, which is more versatile.

s it possible to get phpthumb to use imagemagick? I assume it is a simple configuration change in my ee cp. will check. where does your custom plugin come in ?