Exceptions exceptions...

I figured it out. It was a very dumb mistake on my part. I develop in English, with my comments, etc. in English. But I make Russian websites. So when I switched language in app/config - back to english - EVERYTHING WORKED AS EXPECTED.

However this mistake brought me back to my comment from 9 hours ago.

if(substr($e, 0, 66) === 'CodeIgniter\Images\Exceptions\ImageException: Your server does not') {
          $validation->setError('img_path', lang('mixed.imageException', [], 'custom'));
}

This solution is flawed. I shouldn't match my exception with string contained in $e...I somehow have to figure out another way to figure out if its an exception from forInvalidImageCreate. For now, I'll just have to check for string in English and Russian until I figure out an easier way to catch/figure out exceptions.

UPDATE: solution:

PHP Code:

try {
     $new_images = $simpleImg->upload();
} catch (ImageException $e) {
     //forInvalidImageCreate
     if(strpos($e, lang('Images.unsupportedImageCreate'))) {
          $validation->setError('img_path', lang('mixed.imageException', [], 'custom'));
     }
} 


You can see things I made with codeigniter here: itart.pro its not overly impressive as I have very little time to learn.