is it possible to replace the use of gd_lib with imagick or ImageMagick?

Question

i'm looking around for a solution since weeks and can't make anything work yet. the problem is that my server is running debian/lenny and it's not supporting the bundled gd_lib which i need for thumbnailing/cropping stuff.

but i could make use of imagick or imagemagick (package vs plugin). my question is: is there any way to replace the gd functions in media.php with the ones from imagick? AND is there a smarter way then modiyfing the media.php to do so?

thanks

Answer 1

Yes!

Orangelab has built a plugin which can replace WP's use of GD with Imagemagick (provided it's already installed on your server - it's not included) for creation of all image sizes and thumbs, and even regenerate existing images too!

For anyone who cares about image fidelity, this is huge deal, as GD does not handle color profile preservation or conversion (resulting in horrible desaturation), and also ends up softening any image it converts...

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/imagemagick-engine/