In a new post to the SitePoint PHP blog Jacek Barecki has written up a comparison of two of the most widely used PHP image manipulation libraries - Imagick and GD.

If you want to create a thumbnail, apply a filter to an image or transform it in any other way, you will have to employ an image processing library in your PHP application. It means that you will probably choose GD or ImageMagick. But which one supports a wider range of image formats? Maybe one of them is slower than the other? What other criteria should be taken under consideration when choosing the right library?

He compares them on a few different aspects:

• Availability
• Supported file types
• Functionality
• Performance
• Coding style
• Popularity

He also provides three alternatives to using GD or Imagick, most involving outside services or software.