I've read many articles and discussions in forums and I still cann't figure out the difference between resizing a large image with php(not with html) and creating thumbnails. Except for the fact that the most people suggest phpthumb and imageMagick for thumbnails I don't understand why I should or not prefer to use these and not php functions like imagecreatefromgif(png,jpeg) and imagecopyresampled which can do this job(according to what I read.). What I'm trying to do is to create many galleries, so I want the images the user uploads to be resized in a smaller size if they are too large. Moreover, I need these images to be resized in smaller pictures that will be shown to gallery and when the user clicks on them they get their real size. So far, the user can upload an image that will be saved in a folder. I resize my images for galleries with html(which I know it's wrong) and I use fancybox for clicking and enlarging part with which I am satisfied. Please help understand the difference and give me the your advice what is the best thing to do. Thanks
imagecreatefromgif() will use the GD library by default.
Some reasons why one might prefer ImageMagick are detailed here and here.
That said, if you're happy with what you've got already and if there's no realistic chance of running into any GD dealbreakers later on, you certainly may reasonably decide to stay with what you have.
Take this scenario.
I'm a highly equiped professional photographer and your photo application will store every image I take. I shoot in RAW so my images are massive. I also want to upload the original hi res JPEGs.
Now if you do not resize these images to thumbnails (by whatever mechanism you choose), if I try and view a particular album, I might have to load a 10x 20Mb images, only to have them resized down to 80x60pixels (and become totally crackling/noisy and extremely pixelated).
So what can you do?
Resize the images on your server, using something like ImageMagick as you suggest to generate multiple versions of this image. This way you can deliver optimzed qualities for every occassion.
You should always intend to display an image in it's native resolution/dimension to avoid rastering or resizing noise.
And also, you want to save the different versions of the images.