MagickWand, IMagick or phMagick available

[eluser]ImageSmith[/eluser]
We have just rolled out a site for a client onto their existing web hosting which is LAMP with php5, mysql5. The hosting company is a local one with a good rep but don't allow shell access on their servers.
Does anyone know of an implementation in CI for ImageMagick using MagickWand, IMagick or phMagick API?
Appreciate any assistance.

Cheers,
Dan

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
What do you mean by "an implementation in CI for ImageMagick". What do you need to do? The CodeIgniter image lib supports ImageMagick and GD2, but I suspect this isn't what you're asking. What exactly is it that you need to do, but you can't do without shell access?

[eluser]ImageSmith[/eluser]
No php shell access = no ImageMagick operations in CI.
From what I have gleaned on the MagickWand website is that it doesn't require shell access by the user but instead acts on top of PHP. (I may be mistaken)

** News Flash **
The hosting company has just come back saying that they will allow exec() within php.
** End News Flash **

I am still keen to find an implementation for one of the aforementioned APIs as a backup solution for the future.

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
What's wrong with GD2?

[eluser]ImageSmith[/eluser]
One word - Clunky.

It is slow and resource intensive.
Given that a standard php install has 32MB or less of memory there isn't much space for heavy lifting in image manipulation with GD2.
We had an image creation task running in ImageMagick that took approx 30 secs. Running in GD2 we gave up after about 10 minutes.

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
I agree. However, I doubt you'd be able to run any kind of ImageMagick unless you had access to exec. http://www.imagemagick.org/discourse-ser...=2&t=11615

[eluser]ImageSmith[/eluser]
[quote author="TheFuzzy0ne" date="1237441089"]I agree. However, I doubt you'd be able to run any kind of ImageMagick unless you had access to exec. http://www.imagemagick.org/discourse-ser...=2&t=11615[/quote]
This is why I was originally chasing an implementation of MagickWand which (so far as I can figure) is an extension of php and, as such, should not require access to exec().

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
Are you sure about this, because the docs say "In order to use the MagickWand For PHP module's functions, you need to install ImageMagick version 6.3.5, or greater, and the MagickWand for PHP extension source code / DLL.", which suggests to me that ImageMagick needs to actually be installed on the system.

[eluser]ImageSmith[/eluser]
Of course ImageMagick needs to be installed.
MagickWand is an API for ImageMagick that has a php extension.
Not much point having the API and no core library.
Point is that I expect in using a PHP extension there should be no need to have to access the exec() function.