Should I use ImageMagick or GD2 with ImageAPI in D

Question

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

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.