Limitations

Limitations? Seriously?

CE Image works awesome most of the time, and pushes the envelope of what PHP and the GD library can do. However, there are some things that are simply out of our hands, or that may be due to your particular setup. We want to be as transparent as possible, so you know what can, and cannot be done.

There is an easy way to make sure your system meets the system requirements. If you haven’t already, please check out the Requirements page.

The items below deal with some of CE Image’s known limitations:

Gif Images & Transparency

PHP and GD simply don’t handle gif transparency well. At all. It is not for lack trying, but sometimes, what we tell the image to do, and what it actually does are two different things... So, many manipulations that tamper with transparency do not work well with gifs.

Fortunately gifs are not as popular as they used to be. Their limited color range and transparency support have caused them to give up significant ground to the jpg and png formats. That being said, they are still a very popular format.

There are ways to get around the gif transparency woes. Thankfully, CE Image can save images to different formats. So if you are doing manipulations that involve transparency, saving to png format may help you out. You can also do the same thing with jpgs, but set a background color to be used instead of transparency.

Transparency May Render Black

It’s true, sometimes the PHP/GD combo will not support transparency very well. Sometimes it flat out fails. However, it seems to work pretty well with newer versions of PHP and GD.

Please view If Background Transparency Is Lost for more details, on this black art (awesome pun, right?).

Cook and Clean

Sorry folks, CE Image only manipulates images, and cannot be employed to do your domestic chores!