PHP GD library losing quality. Other ideas?

Question

So I'm in the middle of working on a website that deals with photographs. A user uploads their original photograph and GD library creates a smaller sized image of the same photo. However, when comparing a manually sized down image with the GD one, the GD image seems to lose quite a bit of color quality like it had been slightly desaturated. Any alternate suggestions or ways to improve this?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Use imagecopyresampled instead of imagecopyresized. It gives much better quality. Also, try NOT to use GIF images as output.

Answer 2

Wow, the answer is imagemagick. Easier to use and maintains the full photograph quality!

Answer 3

I'd advice using imagemagick for handling anything serious about photos.

besides quality, you'll find using imagick functions like more convenient

Imagick::cropThumbnailImage()
Imagick::thumbnailImage()