Frequently Asked Questions

TIP

In addition to this, you can also search the issues in the old Imager repo (opens new window), and the Craft CMS Stack Exchange (opens new window).

I bought a "Pro" license and added it to the license code on the settings → plugins page, but it still shows the "Lite/Trial" badge next to it. What's up with that?

This is mostly an UI/UX "feature" in Craft. Even if you buy a Pro license and add it to a plugin, Craft doesn't automatically change the edition for you. If you only had Lite enabled before adding the license, you will still have Lite enabled after adding a Pro serial number.

If you click on the badge, or just navigate to the Imager X page in the plugin store, and scroll down to the bottom of the edition-boxes, there should be a big "Reactivate" button underneath the Pro version. Clicking that should change to the Pro edition, and you're good to go.

I've configured an external storage, but files are still being stored in my imagerSystemPath. What am I doing wrong?

Nothing, this is the expected behavior. Even if you configure one or more external storages, the transformed files will still be stored in the imagerSystemPath. This is the primary location for the transformed files, and acts as the cache for Imager.

Is it possible to delay creating images until after a page has loaded? Similar to what Craft does if generateTransformsBeforePageLoad is set to false.

No, it's not. I wrote a long post about this in the old Imager repo (opens new window).

The new auto generation functionality in Imager X hopefully alleviates some of the need for this.

I use [insert service here] for atomic deploys. Every time I deploy a new version of my site, it seems like Imager has to recreate all the images. This takes a looong time! Please help?

Imager uses the transformed images in imagerSystemPath as its file cache. If a transform does not exist in the path when it is requested, it will be created. If your deploy wipes the file system on every deploy, you'll experience this kind of behaviour.

The solution is to move the folder outside of your deploy path, and create the appropriate symbolic links to it, as part of your post-deploy routine. Just like you would with your Craft storage folder.

I've configured some optimizers and have them set to run as queue jobs. But, they won't run, and when I log into the control panel, there's a long list of pending jobs. But why?

Craft's queue doesn't run automatically for front-end requests, so you probably need to set it up to trigger via a cron job or have a running daemon. Andrew has a good breakdown here (opens new window).

I'm trying to transform an animated GIF, but the server keeps running out of memory/hitting max execution time. What to do?

Transforming animated gifs is a very resource intensive process. PHP does not have any way to process the whole animation in one go, so the file has to be opened, every frame in the animation has to be transformed accordingly, and the resulting gif has to be reassembled. For gifs with many frames, this could spell disaster for your webserver.

Imager has some tricks up its sleeve though, check out this page in the docs.

After transforming an animated GIF, it's bigger that the original. Why?

PHP does not have the ability to process and optimize the animated gif as a whole like other tools have, so the resulting file will basically be x number of separate images merged into one file. This often leads to a bigger file, if the source file was already an optimized one.

You can use the gifsicle optimizer to do post-optimizations on the transform file. Also, see this page in the docs for more hints and tips on animated gifs.