Balancing high-quality images with a fast website is a common struggle for site owners. You want your photos to look sharp, but you don’t want them to slow down your page load times.
This is where the Imagick processing engine comes in handy. It allows you to prioritize either image quality or performance depending on your specific needs.
We have optimized thousands of images across our own websites, so we know how important these settings are for user experience. By tweaking a few options, you can get the best results for your visitors.
In this guide, we will show you how to enable and customize Imagick on your WordPress site.
In this guide, we will walk you through how to enable and customize Imagick on your WordPress site, step by step.
How Does WordPress Use the Imagick Software?
Every time you upload, edit, or display an image, WordPress automatically optimizes that image so it looks great and loads quickly.
By default, WordPress optimizes images using Imagick or the GD Library. These are collections of pre-written code that allow WordPress to display, create, convert, and edit images.
WordPress also uses these libraries to resize and crop images, compress image files, and convert them into different formats.
Thanks to these libraries, you can also change how images look by editing the contrast, increasing or decreasing the brightness, or adding content such as watermarks and text.
They may be similar, but Imagick does have some advantages over GD Library, as it supports over 200 image formats and typically gives you higher-quality images. For that reason, WordPress tends to use the Imagick library if it’s available on the web hosting server.
Why You Should Customize Imagick on Your WordPress Website
Most of the time, you don’t have to worry about Imagick, as WordPress uses it by default wherever possible.
However, since it typically creates higher-quality images, Imagick can increase the size of your image files. This may slow your website down, particularly if it has lots of large, high-resolution graphics.
If your site takes a long time to load, then this is bad news for your WordPress SEO. We use All in One SEO on our sites, and we know that page speed is a critical ranking factor that impacts your visitor experience, conversion rates, and sales.
In fact, our own web design industry research shows that pages loading in 2 seconds have a 9% bounce rate. In contrast, pages that take 6 seconds to load have a staggering 46% bounce rate.
There are lots of ways to boost WordPress speed and performance, and changing your Imagick settings is one of them.
At WPBeginner, we take performance seriously. We use a combination of tools like WP Rocket for caching and Cloudflare for its powerful CDN to make sure our pages load as quickly as possible.
On the other hand, some websites have the opposite problem and need to prioritize quality over speed.
If you run a photography website or create digital graphics with tools like Canva, you need the highest-quality images possible. Even though it’s better than the GD Library, Imagick may still compress images more than you’d like.
No matter your goal, there is no built-in way to change how Imagick handles your images.
That said, let’s check whether Imagick is installed on your website, blog, or online store. If you sell digital products with a plugin like Easy Digital Downloads, image quality is key, so we’ll show you how to customize its settings.
How to Enable Imagick on Your WordPress Site
The easiest way to customize Imagick is by using ImageMagick Engine. This plugin allows you to change how Imagick processes your images.
For example, you can often improve your site’s loading speeds by adjusting the compression level to prioritize file size over image quality.
Note: While Imagick helps, for the best results, we always recommend using a dedicated image compression plugin alongside these settings.
You can also switch between Imagick and the standard GD Library with just a few clicks. This is perfect if you want to test which engine provides better results for your specific images.
First, you’ll need to install and activate the plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, go to Settings » ImageMagick Engine. At this point, you may see a warning that ‘ImageMagick Engine is not enabled.’
If you see this message, simply check the box next to ‘Enable enhanced image engine.’ This activates the plugin and forces WordPress to use Imagick for image processing.
Then, click on ‘Save Changes.’
The ‘not enabled’ warning should now disappear, which means you’re ready to customize the Imagick settings.
Note: Do you see an ‘ImageMagick PHP module not found’ warning instead? This means the ImageMagick module isn’t installed on your server. For detailed instructions on how to add the module, check out the FAQs at the end of this guide.
On this screen, you’ll see all the different WordPress image sizes, such as thumbnail, medium, and large. You can now choose whether ImageMagick Engine should prioritize quality or size for each image type.
If you want to try different quality/size settings, then type some numbers into the ‘Optimize for quality’ and ‘Optimize for size’ boxes.
You can use any number between 0-100. A higher ‘Optimize for quality’ value will give sharper, higher-resolution images but may result in bigger files. This may be a good option if you are creating a photography portfolio or want to sell digital art and graphics online.
If you are not sure, then simply leave these boxes empty, and ImageMagick will assign the best values to each image automatically.
When you are happy with how the plugin is set up, click on ‘Save Changes.’
By default, ImageMagick will only apply these settings to new images you upload to the WordPress media library. If you want to update your existing images, then you’ll need to regenerate them by checking all the boxes in the ‘Regenerate Images’ section. Then, go ahead and click on ‘Regenerate.’
ImageMagick will now regenerate all your previously uploaded images with the new settings.
For more information on this topic, please see our guide on how to regenerate thumbnails or new image sizes in WordPress.
FAQs: How to Enable Imagick on Your WordPress Site
Most of the time, Imagick should work in the background without any problems. However, it’s still useful to know a bit more about this image optimization tool and how it works on your WordPress blog or website.
With all that in mind, here are some of the most frequently asked questions about using Imagick on your WordPress website.
What’s the Difference Between ImageMagick and Imagick?
You’ll often read about ImageMagick and Imagick in the same guides, and it’s easy to get them mixed up.
ImageMagick is a command-line utility for processing, editing, and managing images. It is available for all different kinds of operating systems, and you can use it as a standalone application or a library.
Meanwhile, Imagick is a PHP extension of ImageMagick. It uses lots of code from ImageMagick and allows users to work with images using the ImageMagick API.
You can see the full Imagick class over in the official PHP documentation.
How Do I Install the ImageMagick PHP Module on My Server?
If you get an ‘ImageMagick PHP module not found’ error, then the ImageMagick module is not installed on your server.
Because this is a server-side module, you cannot install it using a WordPress plugin.
If you are a beginner, the easiest way to fix this is by contacting your hosting provider. Their support team can enable it for you quickly.
You can copy and paste this message to send to your web host:
“Hi, I want to use the Imagick engine for better image processing on my WordPress site. Could you please install or enable the ImageMagick PHP module for my account? Thank you!”
If you are an advanced user with access to your server’s command line, you can install the module manually. However, the commands vary depending on your operating system and PHP version (e.g., sudo apt-get install php-imagick for Debian/Ubuntu).
We recommend checking your hosting provider’s documentation for the exact commands for your specific server environment.
Additional Resources
We hope this article helped you learn how to enable and customize Imagick on your WordPress site. You may like to see these additional resources:
- How to Choose the Best Web Design Software – Our guide to help you pick the right tools for designing your website.
- Best Instagram WordPress Plugins – A comparison of the top plugins for displaying your Instagram photos and growing your followers.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Bernice
I tried clicking on the button to enable ImageMagick Engine but the button is not clicking..
It showed “No valid ImageMagick mode found!”
WPBeginner Support
That likely means it is not installed on your server at the moment. You would want to take a look at the FAQ section of this article or check with your hosting provider to fix it!
Admin