Imagick & GD How does it work?

Please help me! I have been trying to get both Imagick and GD to work on my server/computer. I am using PHP and Apache, and I can assure that both of them work well. But what should I do to make imagick and/or GD to work? I have tried everything....

Please do note that my OS is Windows 2000 Advanced Server...
And please take a look at the last reply in this thread... Thanks a lot guys...

When you say "what should I do to make imagick and/or GD to work?", do you mean to work in your code?

Have you read Ben's article on resizing images using GD? If not, take a look and you'll see some useful examples!

First of all Frank thanks for your reply.

But... here it comes. I have been trying to install image magick and also imagick for PHP. First of all I downloaded the latest version of image magick. I have also downloaded the latest version of imagick. Image magick (which is kind of a seperate program) works properly. But Imagick.... thats another story.
I downloaded imagick from http://pear.php.net/package-info.php?package=imagick

The instructions are in a file called "INSTALL". I have red them, and they do frustrate me alot. Here it comes:

1) make sure the path to Magick-config (the ImageMagick configuration script) is in your PATH environment variable
2) cd /usr/src/php/ext
3) untar the imagick tar
4) if the directory created is anything other then imagick, rename it to imagick
5) cd /usr/src/php/ext/imagick
6) phpize

1. Dont understand this step at all. What is the path to Magick-Config? And what is the ImageMagick configuration script?

6. This step is weird. What the hell is phpize? How the hell do I do it? And why doesnt this instruction also include the php_imagick.dll file? Isnt it necessary?

All that I want to do is to install Imagick as a functional extension to PHP. And no! I dont want to use the exec(c:\...\convert.exe -argument) line in my php-code.

PLZ HELP ME.....

Okay, it seems to me that those instructions are for installation on a *nix-based system...

The page where you can download Imagick (from the PEAR site) also offers a link to a windows DLL file here...

See if that helps any.... Let me know.

FrankieShakes, thank you so much for trying to help me out here.
Now here is the trick. I have already downloaded that dll-file and pasted it into my extension-dir in the php-root. I have also made the desired changes to php.ini. I checked with the phpinfo()-function (or something like that) to check if imagick was enabled. And the results said yes, it was. But here is the quite confusing part. When I try to run a test-code (and no I have not written this test-code. I found them on that pear-site. Yes those guys who developed this thing) which contains some imagick-code, it does not work. PHP simply dont recognize the code-lines like imagick_create() or imagick_[...]() (you get the point with [...]).

So thats it. What I have also tried to do lately was to follow a tutorial which should help me out trying to install php without using the install-program. You know, making all those code-changes to php.ini and your desired server-program all by yourself. The tutorial said that it would be better for different php-extensions. AND GUESS WHAT!!! Now that also has given me even more problems. Now I have to reinstall appache and PHP from the beginning. Because I dont understand that error msg. And I am not sitting behind my comp right now to give you a description of that error. I HATE THIS!!!!!!

Anyway it would help me alot if you just could tell me what you think about this dll-unknown-imagick-code-problem-thing!

Wow... I know what you're feeling. I had a similar problem once, and I had to reinstall everything as well.

My only advice would be to go ahead and start from scratch... But I would also try contacting someone from the Imagick team to see what the problem could be. I'm sure it is something simple that you may be overlooking.

If you need anything, don't hesitate to let me know...