Re: Manipulating Graphics with Perl .. Image Magick Vs GD (imager.pm)

[Aristotle]

I don't personally like GD much, but that's just my irrational bias. I submit you need to have a look at Imager before you decide on any one approach. It's as lightweight as GD but does much of what you'd otherwise reach for Image::Magick for.

The problem I ran into with this set of modules is notorious lack of documentation - you'll have to dip into the source, the example programs and take trips to its site and the mailing list archive frequently.

Makeshifts last the longest.

[glwtta]

I've never heard of Imager (and don't really have time to play with it now) - in what ways is it better than GD?

I use GD quite extensively, but exclusively for image generation (so I've never had to touch Image::Magick), it'd be great to know if there is a module out there that can improve the quality of my life.

[Aristotle]

It doesn't depend on an external library for its basic functionality - it's an completely independent and pretty slim XS module. It offers more and more flexible transformations (and is supposed to eventually offer a lot more yet). The killer criteria for me - it antialiases drawing primitives and supports TrueType fonts via FreeType, also antialiased. It is very easy to generate high quality plots using Imager::Plot (I used it for an interactive math report f.ex). I found it pretty easy to work with, overall, and quite intuitive once you figure out in spite of the lacking documentation.

Makeshifts last the longest.

[Anonymous Monk]

Sweet.... any speed / memory comparisons done between imager::plot & gdgraph when you are producing many 300x300 graphs? (Twists Aristotle's arm... :) )