Why isn’t Imagick shipped with WordPress?

Hi there! I’m just a guy who builds with WordPress, so I can’t really speak for the WordPress Core team, but I might be able to give some insight.

ImageMagick is an image manipulation program written in C and designed to run on operating systems like Linux. It would be wildly out of place for an app like WordPress to ship a C binary and try to run it in user space. It wouldn’t be allowed for many reasons, security high on the list.

PHP itself is the liason between the web and the system level programs. The ImageMagick features that WordPress has access to are directly related to the features that the sysadmin has enabled in PHP.

So long story short, if you want more (or better working) ImageMagick in WordPress, talk to whomever maintains the server. Some host have better implementations and other.

But sadly, WordPress will never be able to fix those issues.

wordpress -> PHP (and its extensions, including wrappers to system libraries, like ImageMagick) -> ( Libc ) -> System Kernel -> Hardware

Imagick is a system component, it is supplied by Operating system distributor and installed on server by sysadmin. Basically its even 2 components.. or even more

WordPress using functions from PHP Imagick extension
Imagick PHP extension using system ImageMagick libraries
ImageMagick system libraries are also using system libraries for low level image manipulation (such as libjpeg (or libjpeg-turbo) libpng, ghostscript and other to read and write images, as well as OpenCL and OpenMP libraries optionally to speed up processing using videocard and/or multiple cores)

Obviously WordPress cannot supply everything in its download, your server Operating system supplies that. Its a lot of software with various licenses.

moderator note: It is more like a question or a feedback, so i’m moving this topic to Requests and Feedback

So, what is different from how well WordPress has worked for years (if not decades) with respect to images/media? From the number of postings reporting problems in the last year or so, obviously something changed, and it appears, for the worse.
What changed???

Thanks in advance.

@topher1kenobe

I appreciate your taking the time to share your opinions, but they don’t address the prime issue: “What changed the WordPress Media Library appearance (and upset the intuitive functionality) all of a sudden?”

A number of people are having problems with images/media representations within WordPress’ Media Library. This is happening in systems that heretofore had no problems with respect to these issues, whether on Linux servers from hosting services or on localhost installs, whether on Linux or Windows.

In our case, these problems are occurring on localhost XAMPP installs on Windows 10 Pro. Nothing has changed on these machines or their application loads between the time WordPress was working correctly, and when it now doesn’t. Additionally, we have not had any image issues in any other apps we are processing graphics in.

Something changed; and from the number of postings here, on Apache friends, and other resources, as well as “fixes” on YouTube, it is obvious this is not a one-off problem.

All we’re looking to do is get back to the seamless functionality we previous had: Images/media in WordPress showing up as thumbnails instead of blank placeholders in the icon-matrix view; (I’m not sure what WordPress calls that view). What used to be a one or two click operation as well as the ability to edit those items, now takes four or five steps to do the same things, not including the editing functions. Additionally, it slows the selection process significantly.

So, it appears something is different in WordPress. We’re using the same install and version of XAMPP and there have been no updates to the OS on those machines during the time everything went south. We just want to get that functionality back.

Interestingly, it was the Site Health function in WordPress that brought the imagick issue to our attention. I order to do so, the programming would appear to be sensitive to the requirement of imagick.

Thanks in advance.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by WebAuthor5555.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by WebAuthor5555.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by WebAuthor5555.

I appreciate your taking the time to share your opinions,

That’s good.

but they don’t address the prime issue: “What changed the WordPress Media Library appearance (and upset the intuitive functionality) all of a sudden?”

Aaaand that’s why this should have remained a support topic.

I’m sorry you are having a problem.

There is no way WordPress can account for every iteration of every host and every version installed of ImageMagick. It’s a 3rd party library and app and that’s not trivial.

The majority of WordPress installations just work with the installed ImageMagick without a peep or complaint or even a warning in a server log.

For example: My WordPress installation is from 2005 and has seen many (four? five?) versions of OS from the old PHP and ImageMagick from SuSELinux, Fedora and lately Ubuntu LTS. It just works for me.

That doesn’t mean some users do not have problems but in a support topic volunteers can help identify were the user is having a problem. The Requests and Feedback forum isn’t for troubleshooting.

If you want to solve your issue, we can continue in a support topic.

I agree; that’s why I put it into the support topic area. As you can see from the post by Yui, it was a moderator who moved it to the Requests and Feedback area. Why? I don’t know. Is there a moderator who can move it back???

Thanks in advance.

Maybe a possible consideration: Correct me if inaccurate, but …
It’s my understanding (I saw it posted in one of the discussion groups); that if imagick is not working in WordPress, WordPress has a fallback to a function or app called “GD”. If that’s the case, is there an option with GD to better interface with the WordPress Media Library and how it presents its content? (I’m unfamiliar with GD.) Or, is there a different option??

Thanks.

Oh I see. When you’re looking at that grid of images, in the top left, next to the drop down, there are two little icons to change the view. Click the List one and see if it gets you what you want.

Moved back to Fixing WordPress. ??

GD is very basic library written to support basic image operations, it is often bundled with PHP, but some OS distros supply it separately.
It may have less issues, but it functionality is limited to basic image formats and fuctions, as well as image quality

ImageMagick is versatile and better, thats why it is automatically selected for WP Image editor, when available

ps, plugins working with images can have their own selection and some may not implement imagick, therefore it is advised to have both imagick and GD enabled, or only GD if imagick on your host is faulty and you are fine with basic image formats and quality that GD offers

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by Yui.

You see, considering your statement, “ImageMagick is versatile and better, thats why it is automatically selected for WP Image editor, when available”, that’s where the dichotomy/confusion comes in; especially as I try to solve this puzzle.

As you stated, ” … that’s why it is automatically selected for WP Image editor”. In the many years I’ve been using WordPress, this has never happened, until NOW. So where did the Imagick or ImageMagic go? When did it disappear, and from where did it originally come and doesn’t any longer?? I ask simply because I’m trying to track down the source of this problem for me and a number of others. “And …”, what’s different for all those who are NOT having issues compared to us, (and in my case, are running some development localhost installs on Windows 10Pro with XAMPP, and WordPress)?

Just trying to track this down so hopefully I can fix it with some trust I’ve found the actual problem. (Sure wish WordPress, Apache Friends (PHP), XAMPP, and maybe even Elementor would help with some next steps.

Any ideas on troubleshooting actions? (See my previous posts that contained the Apache error log entries.)

Thanks.

Jan,
Thanks for moving the thread back to Fixing WordPress.
Appreciated.

(Any insights on troubleshooting steps that might shed light???)

Topher,
I should have been more clear; but it was due to my not knowing what WordPress calls those icons…. Apologies.

When I click on the list icon, I get the list, with thumbnails and names. From there, if I click on either the image name or the “Edit” link under the image name, it takes me to an “Attachment Details” page which I cannot edit from. That page does have an “Edit Image” button. When clicked, it takes us to the “Edit Media” page where we can edit and place.

In comparison, the other icon on the Media Library page (let’s call it the “window pane icon”); when selected, returns a matrix of blank placeholders. Those placeholders are selectable by 2x-click, and doing so takes us back to the same Attachment Details page as above, as well as the same option to click-on to the Edit Media page. (A lot of extra steps that heretofore were not needed; as well as trying to find the file we are looking for is tedious at best, especially if you have =>100 images to look through.) This is different. (Read on.)

NEW INFORMATION:
Understand, we have two sites on one of the workstations, both of which are running as virtual sites under XAMPP (i.e. under htdocs, they each run from their own folders and are addressable and functional under localhost. There are a couple of files in Windows that need to be changed and those were successfully completed when the sites were set up months ago. (Up until now, we have been focusing on the problem site, and have just now looked at the other site.)

We’ll call the problematic site we have been working on “Site 1”; and, the other site as “Site 2”.

When we look at Site 2, we don’t have these issues; ONLY ON SITE 1!

That said, and knowing there are probably a g’zillion possible troubleshooting paths to take, … does anyone have any higher ranking possible paths to begin with…??

Thanks.

… I’m thinking of renaming the problematic site as “Can-O-Worms.com”.

Not being a WordPress coder, I’m treading into an area I haven’t been in before.

That said, in the wp-admin/includes/ folder, I’m finding a few php files of interest simply by their names. Could be relevant or ‘not’:

class-wp-links-list-table.php
class-wp-list-table.php
class-wp-list-table-compat.php

Anyone have any experience with the content of those files and whether they are relevant; or, if there are others I should be looking for?

Thanks.