Image Magic

RHolm

Hi,

I'm making a website for a clothing store, and they have a "Feature Fashion" section where they upload images to the server and then they're displayed in here. The problem with this is that the images are all 1.2MB and above, php upload times out before the images are uploaded.

I've been told the server i'm uploading to has Image Magic on it, and I can manipulate it with that. I don't have any experience with this, so i was wondering if anyone could shed some light on what i can do.

Thanks

onion2k

Image Magic won't help you. What IM does is allow you to alter the images (bit like Photoshop) using code. In order for it to manipulate the image the file has to be on the server... if your script is timing out before the image is uploaded then theres nothing on the server for IM to work with.

The two possible solutions are:

Use smaller images. 1.2Meg, even for a high quality JPG file, is MASSIVE. It must be at least 1024*768. Thats just mad. Crop or rescale the image offline first.

Increase the amount of time the script has to run. You can do this in 2 ways, either altering php.ini, or theres a command (set_time_limit() or something). However, this would mean that if the script goes wrong then the server would sit there processing it for ages, potentially stopping other things happening. Don't increase the timeout too much. Its important.

As it is, Image Magic is kind of old, and has been surpassed by the GD functions built into PHP. Theres a big section on images in the PHP manual (and its kind of my thing in PHP too.. so ask here for GD related stuff and I'll try to help).

RHolm

Thanks alot for that info. I decided to read about Image Magick this afternoon and came to that conclusion myself, but thanks anyway.

The whole point in the script is so the client can upload the images through an upload script, or i'd have do it manually at work, I guess i could speak to them about the file sizes. They are 1538*<insert some rediculously high number here> or something with 99% quality, rediculously large if you ask me.

Is there anything client-side that can be done to reduce the filesize before they're uploaded, or will they just have to produce them as smaller files?

Thanks

onion2k

Originally posted by RHolm
Is there anything client-side that can be done to reduce the filesize before they're uploaded, or will they just have to produce them as smaller files?

You could write a browser plugin or a Java applet I guess.. Theres nothing JavaScript can do to help, thats for sure..

Mind you, if you grab IrfanView (google for it) thats an awesome little image program that can batch resize loads of pics at once. Its very quick, and actually does a better job of resampling than Photoshop. IrfanView has Lanczos resampling, PS only has Bicubic resampling..

RHolm

On second thoughts, I think i might just speak to the client and get them to make smaller images, it's so much easier that way.