Is there anything easier than ImageMagick/ImageScience?

rubyonrails-talk
1

I for some of my current projects, I want to scale and crop photos for avatars. Installing ImageMagick/ImageScience and making it work is such a pain in the butt.

Isn't there some easier way?

Is there any web service that will do things like scale, crop or make thumbnails?

There has to be something easier.

Thanks, Mike

2

Based on another post, I'm using "convert" as a system command (RMagick is notorious for memory leaks).

`convert -resize 200x40 -quality 70 public/images/catalog/#{@item.id}- #{c}.jpg public/images/catalog/thumbs/#{@item.id}-#{c}.jpg`

This works for me. It's not necessarily easier, but it shouldn't be leaky.

I saw a mention of an alternative called something like mini-magick, but I can't remember for sure.

-Kyle

3

I have found ImageScience to be a lightweight way to do it actually. The install was quick and easy. Install FreeImage and then install the image_science gem. There were many tutorials online and it was like a 4 command process. What issues did you encounter? I am on Mac OS but I also did it on Ubuntu and it works equally as well on windows.

4

Just to clarify RMagick does not leak memory. http://rubyforge.org/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1374&forum_id=1618 and http://redhanded.hobix.com/inspect/theFullyUpturnedBin.html. That’s not to say that RMagick doesn’t use a lot of memory and if you’re just thumbnailing there might indeed be better ways. But I had to set the record straight about the “notorious” memory leaks. I wonder which lie will die first? RMagick’s leaks or Rails can’t scale. :wink:

RSL

5

Paperclip is new. It depends on ImageMagick (which I found easy to install on Mac OS X, anyway), and it claims to be simpler to use than some other approaches. I only know one person who's used it, and it worked well (after he submitted a few patches).

Regards, Craig

6

Russel,

Thanks for the clarification. I spoke with too much [false] certainty and am glad to be corrected.

-Kyle