Changing from Imagick to GD

FooGallery Documentation

Changing from Imagick to GD

Imagick and GD are both image optimization libraries that are supported by WordPress. Under the hood, WordPress uses these to create thumbnails of media images that you upload. Imagick and GD are installed on your server and are available as PHP extensions. You might only have one installed on your server, or both. As a default, WordPress will use of Imagick over GD if both are available.

Some features within FooGallery are only available with the GD image library. We are working on making FooGallery 100% compatible with Imagick, but that might take some time to implement. The features that are only available with GD are:

  • Upscale small images (available on FooGallery -> Settings -> Images Tab)
  • Thumbnail cropping – fill background (available when editing a gallery under Gallery Settings -> Advanced Tab)

If you are wanting to use these features, or if you prefer GD over Imagick, you can now! To make this easy, we’ve built a setting into FooGallery to allow you to switch from Imagick to GD.

The first thing you should do is check whether your system is using Imagick or GD. You can do this by going to FooGallery –> Settings. Click on the Images tab. The first thing you’ll see is a field called Thumbnail Image Library. This will tell you whether GD and Imagick are supported, and which is being currently active and being used by your system:

Thumbnail Image Library

Note: You can also find this information under FooGallery –>System Info in the admin menu.

Switching to GD

If both Imagick and GD are available on your hosting server, then to force GD to be used, follow these steps:

  1. Go to FooGallery –> Settings –> Images Tab.
  2. Scroll down to the bottom of the page until you find a setting called Force GD Library.
  3. Check this, and click on Save Changes.
Force GD Library

Your system should now be using GD Library. To confirm this, scroll to the top of the Image Settings page and check that the thumbnail library currently active is GD.