Must I have ImageMagick, GD or NetPBM for thumbnails?

[Paprika]

Hi,

Basically my new host sucks and I don't believe they have  ImageMagick, GD or NetPBM installed, But I want an Art Gallery for my members which creates thumbnails from the fullsized art.

Please let me know what my options are.
Thanks  

[Vampy]

My experience is to advise you to go for NetPBM. it's very simple to install. Just download the necessary binaries and upload them to a folder on your server. That's it. Also, it generally produces better quality thumbnails then GD. If I'm not wrong, the newer versions of GD does not support .gif anymore.

Just my 2 cents. Someone else here may think differently and I'm no expert.

[Chris]

Yes.  You need one of those packages to generate thumbnails.  Your host would need to install ImageMagick or GD.  NetPBM can be installed by you.

[Paprika]

Great!   Thanks for the help guys!

Well here is the thing... I only see that I can download the source code or the RPM package from the NetPBM site... where can I find just the binaries?

[Chris]

:

http://netpbm.sourceforge.net/

[Paprika]

lol. I asked a question. What do I do?
You guys made it seem like all I need is ftp access. I don't have shell/SSH access so I cannot do anything with a RPM file. What should I do?

As I said before, all they have for download at the NetPBM homepage is the Sourcecode and some pre-built distributions for common platforms. The linux platform pre-built distributions are RPM packages.

[Chris]

Sorry, but you never said you only have FTP access.  How were we to know?  

If you don't have SSH or telnet access, you'll need to ask your host to install it for you.

[Paprika]

...My experience is to advise you to go for NetPBM. it's very simple to install. Just download the necessary binaries and upload them to a folder on your server. That's it....

Chris, I found your reply to be rather offensive. Look at the above quote and you will see WHY that I thought it would work out with only ftp access. If you still don't understand   then Let me explain it; Vampy said all I had to do is download the nessessary binaries, and upload them to a folder. It makes a bit of sense to me but I was not able to find these binaries. Only the source code and RPM packages.

[www.girls-on-bikes.com]

Just another option: you don't *need* any of the image thumbnailers if you create thumbnails manually in Photoshop or something and upload them.  I know you would want one of the image thumbnailers, but just wanted to point out it's not 100% necessairy to have them.

[Paprika]

yeah I know, but I can't want to complicate things for my site members.

Isn't it possible for 4images to simply create thumbnails itself? Maybe there is a mod add-on that does this?

[V@no]

Chris, I found your reply to be rather offensive. Look at the above quote and you will see WHY that I thought it would work out with only ftp access. If you still don't understand   then Let me explain it; Vampy said all I had to do is download the nessessary binaries, and upload them to a folder. It makes a bit of sense to me but I was not able to find these binaries. Only the source code and RPM packages.

I dont know, Paprika, whats could be offensive when someone pointing u to the right direction? if u click at the link that Chris posted, u'd find link to the binaries.
P.S. also, u didnt even mentioned what OS your host uses, and that's VERY importand when u need binaries

[Paprika]

ha! funny.
Anyway the host is running RedHat Linux.
I found it offensive when he said "How were we to know?" As if there was something I was suppose to tell him but I didn't, As if I had purposely mislead people. Anyway for get about what I said. I just want to get 4images to work for me.

One thing I was gonna try to do was extract the binaries from the RPM package but that won't work because the only RPM Extractor google found, the webpage is not avalible. Reports say it has been down for a few years, so....

[Paprika]

Anyone got final words before I go look for other gallery software?  

[www.girls-on-bikes.com]

Unless you have super user (root) access on the server you are using, your webhost will need to install one of the image packages.

[V@no]

Anyone got final words before I go look for other gallery software?  

any other gallery software would requre one of those three graphic packages