Do I really need GD?

[ovdb]

I want to make a system that allows me to:
1. check the height and width of an image
2. resize images
3. upload images

Do I really need GD support, because my server doesn't support it. 🙁

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by ovdb
I want to make a system that allows me to:
1. check the height and width of an image
2. resize images
3. upload images

Do I really need GD support, because my server doesn't support it. 🙁

1. No, getImageSize() does not need GD.

2. GD is the only image-processing library PHP directly supports for image resizing; however, a popular alternative is ImageMagick. This or some other similar program that can be run from the command line can also be used to do the job.

3. Certainly not: as far as uploading images go, this is done in exactly the same way as uploading any other file.

[killerbishop]

An "experimental" PECL extension is available that natively binds PHP to ImageMagick - this could be compiled as a shared library and loaded using:

dl('imagick.so');

The library is available from the PEAR site at:

http://pear.php.net/manual/en/pecl.imagick.php