I got a Mercury AMI instance up and running. This is my first time using AWS, so it's a bit of an exploration process for me.
After installing imagecache and image api, I see this warning in the Drupal status report.
GD Image Filtering Low Quality / Poor Performance
The installed version of PHP GD does not support image filtering(desaturate, blur, negate, etc). It was probably compiled using the official GD libraries from http://www.libgd.org instead of the GD library bundled with PHP. You should recompile PHP --with-gd using the bundled GD library. See http://www.php.net/manual/en/image.setup.php. An implementation of imagefilter in PHP will be used in the interim.GD Image Rotation Low Quality / Poor Performance
The installed version of PHP GD does not support image rotations. It was probably compiled using the official GD libraries from http://www.libgd.org instead of the GD library bundled with PHP. You should recompile PHP --with-gd using the bundled GD library. See: http://www.php.net/manual/en/image.setup.php. An implementation of imagerotate in PHP will used in the interim.
Are there plans to change how GD is compiled? Or is there another solution to this I should be directed toward?
Comments
Either recompile PHP with the
Either recompile PHP with the more feature-rich version of GD or what I do is apt-get imagemagick and use that instead.
We could do this by default...
I have traditionally used GD, but if people have a preference for Imagemagick, we can include that.
https://pantheon.io | http://www.chapterthree.com | https://www.outlandishjosh.com
I personally prefer GD. I
I personally prefer GD. I think that what would like is to start off with a compilation of PHP that includes the GD library that is bundled with PHP. As in the suggestion in the warning message: "recompile PHP --with-gd using the bundled GD library".
Do you think that the Mercury base build could be updated with that?
(I realize I can recompile PHP on my own, but I'm more interested in seeing Mercury get this into its presets.)
And then if you want to add imagemagick, that's a nice bonus.
I see where you're coming
I see where you're coming from, but it's not a Pantheon issue. If anything, it's a Debian issue, and one they refuse to address. I doubt the Pantheon project wants to get into the business of repackaging Ubuntu packages and updating PPAs for regular security patches to address issues that aren't Drupal issues.
I haven't personally tested php-gd versus imagemagick for speed or memory use, but the rumor is that gd is faster, but that imagemagick doesn't run into php memory issues. That second reason is enough for me to use imagemagick on my small VPS so I don't have to run huge memory limits on my php processes.
If you want imagerotate (or other useful functions) then the easiest thing to do is install imagemagick. Since imageapi gratefully has good support for imagemagick built in, it's really no more complicated to use than php-gd.
How do you feel about using the dotdeb.com repos ala http://drupal.org/node/134331#comment-1120427.
Packaging issue
Yes, this is a packaging issue with GD. I really don't want to get into the business of having core parts of the stack from Unofficial (non distro) repositories unless those repos are from the software projects themselves: e.g. we add the BZR apt source, but that's the official project repository.
We'll review this further, but I lean towards imagemagick at this point since once derivatives are generated speed isn't an issue, and the memory footprint rumor does make it attractive.
https://pantheon.io | http://www.chapterthree.com | https://www.outlandishjosh.com