PaperClip Error NotIdentifiedByImageMagickError wh

Question

I have been banging my head against this for several days. Recently, my image uploader has stopped working properly. I have investigated several possibilities, but have none of the suggested solutions have worked in my case.

The error message is:

#<Paperclip::Errors::NotIdentifiedByImageMagickError:Paperclip::Errors::NotIdentifiedByImageMagickError> 

Here are the details:

• Mac OS X 10.8.3
• ImageMagick 6.8.4-4 2013-03-29
• libtool => /usr/bin/libtool
• Rails 3.2.13
• Ruby 1.9.3p194

development.rb contains appropriate path (and I have verified that it is correct using which identify)

Paperclip.options[:command_path] = "/usr/local/bin/"

Gemfile.lock (relevant portion)

paperclip (3.4.1)
  activemodel (>= 3.0.0)
  activerecord (>= 3.0.0)
  activesupport (>= 3.0.0)
  cocaine (~> 0.5.0)

MODEL (I am updating a classroom object, but the picture resides in the location model. (Classroom has_one :location, :as => :locatable)

Model location.rb

class Location < ActiveRecord::Base
  ## Paperclip method for uploading location images

  has_attached_file :picture, :styles => {:show => "1200x500#", :medium => "300x300#", :thumb => "100x100>"}, :convert_options => {:show => "-gravity center"}  
  has_attached_file :building_sign, :styles => { :show => ["1200x500#", :jpg], :medium => ["300x300#", :jpg], :thumb => ["100x100#", :jpg] }, :convert_options => {:show => "-gravity center"}
  belongs_to :locatable, :polymorphic => true
  belongs_to :location_type  
  validates :name,  :presence => true

  validates :latitude, :presence => true,
                       :length => {:within => 9..18},
                       :numericality => true
  validates :longitude, :presence => true,
                        :length => {:within => 9..18},
                        :numericality => true
end

Controller classrooms_controller.rb

def update
  @classroom = Classroom.find_by_facility_code_heprod(params[:id].upcase)

  respond_to do |format|
    if @classroom.update_attributes(params[:classroom])
      format.html { redirect_to(@classroom, :notice => 'Classroom was successfully updated.') }
      format.xml  { head :ok }
    else
      format.html { render :action => "edit" }
      format.xml  { render :xml => @classroom.errors, :status => :unprocessable_entity }
    end
  end
end

What I've tried.

• I've made sure that the image name is simple (USB2230.jpg), no colons.
• I've updated the version of ImageMagick to the most recent.
• I've also re-downloaded and reinstalled the CommandLine Tools for 10.8.3 (someone suggested that the issue might be related to an outdated libtool).
• I've rebooted the computer.

• I've tried variations on gem versions including

  # variation 1
  gem 'paperclip', '~> 2.8.0'
  gem "cocaine", "=0.3.2"
  
  # variation 2
  gem "paperclip", "~> 3.4.0"
  gem "cocaine", "= 0.4"
  
  # variation 3 (which is what is reflected in the included Gemfile.lock info above).
  gem "paperclip", "~> 3.4.0"
  

If I remove the scaling,

:styles => {:show => "1200x500#", :medium => "300x300#", :thumb => "100x100>"},
:convert_options => {:show => "-gravity center"}

the upload works, but I kind of need the scaling ;-)

Can anyone see something I am missing?

Answer 1

I had the same issue, although my server is on Linux. Can't tell you exactly how to do it because I don't have a Mac to test, but hopefully this points you in the right direction.

This worked for me with ImageMagick 6.8.5-5, Paperclip 3.4.2, latest version of cocaine, Rails 3.2.13:

I went into geometry_detector_factory.rb in the Paperclip gem and commented out the 2 lines around the identify call: (this step is not necessary, just explaining what I did to determine the problem)

#silence_stream(STDERR) do 
    Paperclip.run("identify", "-format '%wx%h,%[exif:orientation]' :file", :file => "#{path}[0]")
#end

along with the corresponding "end" statement. This allowed me to see the errors on the command line when running the "identify" command.

Basically the error said: "no decode delegate for this image format"

You can probably look up that error and get it figured out, but basically what I did was go to usr/local/bin and run: (also not necessary, unless you want to see what you have installed)

convert -list configure

and look for the DELEGATES line. I had another Linux server where ImageMagick was working and after comparing the two I realized the new one had only 2 delegates installed. I was able to run:

yum install ImageMagick-devel

and then recompile ImageMagick with make, make install and it worked.

You can also find the delegates manually on the ImageMagick site and install them one by one but that library pretty much covered it for me.

Debugging ImageMagick? Ain't nobody got time for that!

Answer 2

You already mentioned that you tried upgrading ImageMagick, but I had the same issue and upgrading to ImageMagick 6.8.0-10 2013-03-03 fixed it for me.

Answer 3

Had same issue with image_magic that was breaking our paperclip functionality in production, but not in development (weird, I know). Yet even after removing imagemagick from our gemfile and Gemfile.lock locally (running bundle install and all that stuff) and then deploying back to production on heroku, the error persisted in production! (weird, I know).

What ended up doing the trick was running:

$ heroku repo:purge_cache -a myAppName

(Taken from: https://github.com/heroku/heroku-repo#purge_cache)

When you deploy your app, Heroku caches some things like your assets and installed gems in order to speed up deployment. Although this is a great feature, it can have side-effects sometimes, and in this case, it seems that something about the imagemagick gem got "stuck" in production's cache, which is why purging solved the issue for us (since after purging, your app will rebuild itself from scratch on your next deployment)

Answer 4

Had the problem on my window dev environment, using paperclip 3.5.2, cocaine 0.5.3, and ImageMagic 6.8.8.

Solution was to add:

Paperclip.options[:command_path] = 'C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-6.8.8-Q16'

to config/environment/development.rb

Answer 5

We just ran into this issue, and it turned out to be an issue where ghostscript wasn't installed. I took the advise of Scott Cornwell and removed the silencing of errors, and then determined that convert was failing because ghostscript wasn't available.

   brew install ghostscript 

Fixed the issue for us.