ImageMagic - necessary?

[SteveF]

Hello,

I've been working in the evenings for about a week now to get EE running - no luck yet. But I'm excited enough about the feature set and the look of others galleries to keep trying.

Questions pertain to 1.5 RC3 and up. I'm on an IIS 5 server which currently does not have ImageMagic installed.

Question on ImageMagic. My guess is that this is a server side program which allows you to upload one file and then it will generate all the picture sizes that you would like and put them in the correct place. Is this correct?

Question two: If I want to do the file sizes manually and upload them to the correct folders can I do this? Will I run into errors by not having ImageMagic available on my server (i.e. do I need to move servers to run EE?)

Question three: What Imagemagic does is pretty focal to one part of the program - do you think I (or someone I paid) could make asp thumbnailer, aspjpeg and aspupload (which are on my server) integrate with EE, or would this be more trouble than its worth?

thanks,

Steve

[Pekka]

Hello,

I've been working in the evenings for about a week now to get EE running - no luck yet. But I'm excited enough about the feature set and the look of others galleries to keep trying.

Hi Steve,

Do not hesitate to ask if you have problems. What are the problems you have faced?

Questions pertain to 1.5 RC3 and up. I'm on an IIS 5 server which currently does not have ImageMagic installed.

Question on ImageMagic. My guess is that this is a server side program which allows you to upload one file and then it will generate all the picture sizes that you would like and put them in the correct place. Is this correct?

Imagemagick processes file in temporary folder. It resizes, adds sharpening if needed, adds watermark if needed and removes profiles and EXIF if needed. It it not part of upload system per se.

You install Imagemagick using normal installer, set php.ini to accept exec function calls to its install folder (at least with Apache) and set its paths in graphics modules editor in EE. Imagemagick installer does some environment variables which let you use default paths "convert" and "composite".

Question two: If I want to do the file sizes manually and upload them to the correct folders can I do this? Will I run into errors by not having ImageMagic available on my server (i.e. do I need to move servers to run EE?)

Imagemagick is not part of upload system. It is part of resize methods. You can always use GD(2) as resizemethod as it is included with newer PHP versions. Then you can ftp better quality images to correct folder over the GD ones. Too bad GD does not have sharpening....

You can also use resizemethod NONE in path setup which means no resize is done, and use GD2 only for thumbs and microthumbs.

There is also fully manual workflow, which is not fully finished, you can open input/EDITOR_manual_input.php to try that (it's not on EE editor menu). But it is laborous. If you work on localhost ftp (i.e the ftp server is on same machine as the web server) the standard EE upload workflow is so much easier and faster.

Question three: What Imagemagic does is pretty focal to one part of the program - do you think I (or someone I paid) could make asp thumbnailer, aspjpeg and aspupload (which are on my server) integrate with EE, or would this be more trouble than its worth?

Of course it is always possible to code special applications. I'm not sure what the benefits would be. As you can run programs with PHP using exec function, it could be wiser to just install IM and let it do it all. If you need some high-end sharpening system you could let IM only resize and code a call for Photoshop action snippet to do sharpening and saving. But I recommend checking first if IM can be installed.

If you have trouble with IIS in general, try Apache. Apache is much easier to work with, security-wise. I'm sure you can install Apache on Windows and use that instead of IIS. Apache is freeware. And EE is developed on Apache/PHP combination (I don't actually guarantee IIS to work with EE yet).

[SteveF]

Hello,

Do not hesitate to ask if you have problems. What are the problems you have faced?

Probably mostly related to the fact that 2 weeks ago I didn't know what PHP was or that servers ran such varied software.

I decided to open a web gallery and so read some server reviews and signed up with one. Turns out they are IIS and won't load ImageMagic. Wish I had done a little more research, but when starting out one doesn't even know which questions to ask. Think I'll see how much of my money I can get back and try again with a more EE friendly server.

Thanks for the quick reply. I've been impressed enough with what you've developed that I'll probably make a donation even if I can't get it working. :)

Steve

[TomKa]

You can also use resizemethod NONE in path setup which means no resize is done, and use GD2 only for thumbs and microthumbs.

You can use this workflow described by Pekka. A nice tool to prepare your image on your computer at home is XAT Image Optimizer from www.xat.com .Put all the pictures (different sizes etc.) of a gallery in a folder and run Image Optimizer in batch mode to resize, correct the levels and sharpen. After that you can upload the pictures in the UPLOAD folder of EE with an FTP client and use the above workflow to insert the pics in the gallery.
Archiving pictures with IMatch and using the IPTC tags, the description, subcategory and the keywords will be imported from EE into the database. Inserting 200 pics in a couple of minutes is no problem.
This was my test gallery using IPTC. With a program like Exifer you can look at the EXIF and IPTC tags inside the picture file.
http://www.panoviews.com/foto/list.php?exhibition=7