Imagemagick Vs. GD

[JDcrack]

I was recently told :

For any advanced image manipulation functions such as,
I would suggest taking a look at ImageMagick
Much more stable, and faster too

Is that true about ImageMagick? Wouldn't ImageMagick have to be started everytime you created an image with it? The gd-lib is shared between everyone, right? So that would make ImageMagick less efficient, at least, that's what I thought...

[gid]

I wrote a site that automatically made thumb nails of images that users uploaded. I chose to use imagemagick so I wouldn't have to deal with any additional php requirements learn any complicated gd functions so I could just execute a simple shell command and be done. Also, I knew image uploading would be rare on this site anyway as it was for a bunch of my friends to share pictures. Maybe 1 image a day, if that.

If you really worried about speed, the internal gd functions are the way to go, but will take more time to learn and implement most likely.

[theeper]

I use imageMagick extensively. I have never seen a benchmark test for imageMagick vs GD, but imageMagick is certainly more powerful. It has several utility programs that make image manipulation very easy to implement.

One thing to consider is that imageMagick is not free for commercial use though.