File is not an image… unless I edit it first

Based on your description, that sounds like the file is missing the file extension. Your Mac doesn’t need a file extension to figure out what kind of file it is, so it doesn’t throw any errors. But Windows has always relied on the file extension, and apparently so does WordPress (that’s a WP error, not actually from Imsanity itself).
So try adding the correct file extension and see what happens (.jpg or .png).

Thanks for the quick response, and good tip about the file extension, but I can confirm the files all had the correct file extension.

On the Mac I simply used Preview to edit the image, and then added the file extension manually. But this did not work.

On the PC I opened the image in Fireworks and then exported it as a jpg, and that file did work. The problem is that the site is one I built for a client, and she does not have any image editing software, hence why I suggested imsanity to manage any large images being uploaded.

Any other ideas,

best wishes

Patrick

what format is the file actually in?

As far as I can tell it’s a jpg.

I have put it here for you to have a look at in case that helps. This is the original file I was sent that failed to be recognised as an image.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1vj6nyaro1bl2jp/Prenbendal%20Mask%202.jpg?dl=0

I hope that helps

Thanks

P

It definitely came through as a JPG from Dropbox, but they do some automagic stuff with images, so hard to say if they “fixed” it in the process. I uploaded it on 3 different sites, and none of them threw an error. Is there any way you can dump the original file on the site with SFTP or FTP and give a direct link to see if that makes any difference?

Ah, I didnt realise dropbox manipulated image. Here is a link to the file that fails – uploaded via ftp.

https://www.choirschools.org.uk/ims-img/Prenbendal%20Mask%202.jpg

hope that helps

P

Not sure how much Dropbox does, but I do know they invented the Lepton encoding that they supposedly use to compress images “at rest”, and then they decompress the files back to JPG when you access a file.

That said, downloaded that one, and same results. All 3 tests sites uploaded with no error.

Check the phpinfo and see if the imagick extension is enabled (and what formats it lists if so).

phpinfo makes no mention of imagick, although GD is there as shown above. It’s a shared hosting platform.

Does that mean that Imsanity will not work?

Thanks

P

No, I just wondered if perhaps imagick was installed but missing something, since WP will usually prefer imagick over GD if available.
I’m going to do some more digging on that error to see if I can find exactly why WordPress (or GD) returns that particular message.

Realized I was using imagick on a couple of my test sites, only 1 had GD, but it was a newer version.
At any rate, switching the others to GD didn’t change the results, it still worked just fine.

That particular message simply means that this function failed: imagecreatefromstring
It’s what loads the image file into a GD resource for the resizing process.

There are only 2 reasons I know of for that to fail (besides an actual unsupported image format):
1. the image is corrupted
2. there is not enough memory to load the image.

Since the image loads just fine on all my servers, it’s my guess that the memory limit is too low to work with these images. While a 993kb image might seem small, it’s the actual canvas size that makes all the difference.
A 6000px x 4000px image is going to use a lot of memory, well over 100MB, since it has to be uncompressed into “bitmap” format for GD to work with it.

So, I would check to see what your PHP memory limit is set to on the server.

Thanks for the response.. I have just checked and the memory is 128MB. I spoke to the hosts and they monitored the log files while I uploaded an image and said that the log reported no memory error.

Would it help if I gave you access to a site on this server so you can test things?

If it’s only 128M, it’s almost guaranteed that it is a memory error, BUT when the core WP function calls imagecreatefromstring(), it suppresses errors, so that’s probably why there are no memory errors in the logs.

You are right (I suspect you already knew that). I have edited a php.ini file to increase the memory and now the image uploads.

Thank you for your patience and support resolving this.

best wishes

Patrick

No problem, just wish I would have thought of that sooner!