Image resize issue in PHP - gd creates ugly resized images

Question

I am creating thumbnails of fixed height and width from my PHP script using the following function

/*creates thumbnail of required dimensions*/
function createThumbnailofSize($sourcefilepath,$destdir,$reqwidth,$reqheight,$aspectratio=false)
{
    /*
     * $sourcefilepath =  absolute source file path of jpeg
     * $destdir =  absolute path of destination directory of thumbnail ending with "/"
     */
    $thumbWidth = $reqwidth; /*pixels*/
    $filename = split("[/\\]",$sourcefilepath);
    $filename = $filename[count($filename)-1];
    $thumbnail_path = $destdir.$filename;
    $image_file = $sourcefilepath;

    $img = imagecreatefromjpeg($image_file);
    $width = imagesx( $img );
    $height = imagesy( $img );

    // calculate thumbnail size
    $new_width = $thumbWidth;
    if($aspectratio==true)
    {
     $new_height = floor( $height * ( $thumbWidth / $width ) );
    }
    else
    {
     $new_height = $reqheight;
    }

    // create a new temporary image
    $tmp_img = imagecreatetruecolor( $new_width, $new_height );

    // copy and resize old image into new image
    imagecopyresized( $tmp_img, $img, 0, 0, 0, 0, $new_width, $new_height, $width, $height );

    // save thumbnail into a file

    $returnvalue = imagejpeg($tmp_img,$thumbnail_path);
    imagedestroy($img);
    return $returnvalue;
}

and I call this function with following parameters

createThumbnailofSize($sourcefilepath,$destdir,48,48,false);

but the problem is the resulting image is of very poor quality, when I perform the same operation with Adobe Photo shop, it performs a good conversion.. why it is so? I am unable to find any quality parameter, through which I change the quality of output image..

Answer 1

use imagecopyresampled() instead of imagecopyresized()

Answer 2

if it is image quality you are after you need to give the quality parameter when you save the image using imagejpeg($tmp_img,$thumbnail_path,100) //default value is 75

/*creates thumbnail of required dimensions*/
function 
createThumbnailofSize($sourcefilepath,$destdir,$reqwidth,$reqheight,$aspectratio=false)
{
    /*
     * $sourcefilepath =  absolute source file path of jpeg
     * $destdir =  absolute path of destination directory of thumbnail ending with "/"
     */
    $thumbWidth = $reqwidth; /*pixels*/
    $filename = split("[/\\]",$sourcefilepath);
    $filename = $filename[count($filename)-1];
    $thumbnail_path = $destdir.$filename;
    $image_file = $sourcefilepath;

$img = imagecreatefromjpeg($image_file);
$width = imagesx( $img );
$height = imagesy( $img );

// calculate thumbnail size
$new_width = $thumbWidth;
if($aspectratio==true)
{
    $new_height = floor( $height * ( $thumbWidth / $width ) );
}
else
{
    $new_height = $reqheight;
}

// create a new temporary image
$tmp_img = imagecreatetruecolor( $new_width, $new_height );

// copy and resize old image into new image
imagecopyresized( $tmp_img, $img, 0, 0, 0, 0, $new_width, $new_height, $width, $height );

// save thumbnail into a file

$returnvalue = imagejpeg($tmp_img,$thumbnail_path,100);
imagedestroy($img);
return $returnvalue;

}

Answer 3

You could also consider using ImageMagick (http://us3.php.net/manual/en/book.imagick.php) instead of Gd. I had the same problem just a couple of days ago with Java. Going for ImageMagick instead of Java Advanced Images resultet in a huge quality difference.

Answer 4

You might also want to take a look at the Image_Transform PEAR package. It takes care of a lot of the low-level details for you and makes creating and maniuplating images painless. It also lets you use either GD or ImageMagick libraries. I've used it with great success on several projects.