rp wrote:In my opinion the area of shared hosting is ending. Cloud hosting became so affordable and is easy to setup that most people with the technical skills to setup a website in a shared hosting account also have the skills to run a cloud server. Cloud hosting gives all the flexibility for configuration. Missing packages such as ImageMagick or lack of resources are not an issue anymore. The other users who can't or not want to maintain a server themselves, will use SaaS, like your Flamepix.
I agree with using ImageMagick, as this is probably available even on many shared hosting these days with a simple checkbox from control panel. While "cloud hosting" is certainly the way to go if you are technically comfortable, it's far from mainstream for the masses (including X3 users). The majority will deal with FTP, email, but they don't want to deal with "code" or ssh, apache, ubuntu, terminal and the possibility that something "breaks". As for Flamepix, it's simply too expensive for most users who are on a budget. For a one-time purchase app like X3, there simply isn't volume to support business if we only rely on technically adept users that run their own servers. Assuming this has something to do with Koken discontinued also. I'm sure there is a way to satisfy all requirements.
rp wrote:I understand there is a trade off between functionality and simplicity and the two major points that make X3 unique is that it "looks great" and "just runs". So you could put all these extra features that require ImageMagick or more Memory in a separate plugin. You could make that plugin also paid, as it replaces the need for desktop application in many cases. It might also target other potential users who are not professional photographers but want a self hosted CRM with more possibilities.
The main reason we haven't used ImageMagick yet, is mainly because there hasn't been much need for it to be honest. The built-in PHP GD does resizing of same quality as ImageMagick, and with memory_limits climbing past 128MB, it's not really a memory issue either. Of course, for those pro photographers who take great pride in their photography (as they should), they require customization levels like "sharpening" (as in
this post). Apart from "sharpening", I really haven't come across other requirements for ImageMagick.
As for
upload full size image, this is something I wanted to avoid for logical reasons. Imagine uploading 100 x 5MB images, that's 500 MB to upload, and the host will need to provide the space also (at least temporarily). With the resizing happening on upload (from browser), total upload size will be more like 30 MB, which is a huge difference in time spent. And the end result is the same resized images.
Appreciate the feedback of course! Just thinking aloud. No reason we can't use ImageMagick in the future, but I am conserned about changing the approach to uploading originals online (security, storage-space, time-consuming), if the benefit is minimal.