Title: Imagick library Last modified: January 28, 2026 --- # Imagick library * Resolved [Guido](https://wordpress.org/support/users/guido07111975/) * (@guido07111975) * [2 months, 2 weeks ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/imagick-library/) * Hi [@kubiq](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kubiq/) * Is there a way you can use the thumbnail generator from WP itself, instead of the Imagick library? I have sites hosted at different (budget) hosts and they all don’t have the Imagick library available / installed. * Guido Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total) * Plugin Author [kubiq](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kubiq/) * (@kubiq) * [2 months, 2 weeks ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/imagick-library/#post-18801239) * Hello, * Could you please be more specific about what “the thumbnail generator from WP itself” means? * As far as I know, it’s always the GD or Imagick library. Feel free to give me a link to some resources about the topic you’re referring to. I’ll look into it. * Have a nice day! Jakub * Thread Starter [Guido](https://wordpress.org/support/users/guido07111975/) * (@guido07111975) * [2 months, 2 weeks ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/imagick-library/#post-18801610) * Hi Jakub, * I never have “thumbnail creating issues”, so I guess those sites use GD instead? Is the GB library more used by (budget) hosts perhaps? (I’m obviously no expert on this) * Guido * Plugin Author [kubiq](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kubiq/) * (@kubiq) * [2 months, 2 weeks ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/imagick-library/#post-18802040) * I don’t think that GD can even read PDF… it’s only for image processing from image files, so probably only Imagick can process PDFs, but that’s a standard library, nothing special, I have it on hostings that cost 1€/month. * But wait, you’re saying that you never had problems with PDF thumbnails? So you used some other plugins to do that? Can you give me the plugin name? Because there are some extra libraries that you can use in PHP and tricky ways how to process PDFs, but it’s much more complicated and you would need to include many dependencies, so the plugin would be much bigger, etc… If you are interested in such a solution, you can reach me by the email and we can discuss some custom solution created only for you, but that’s not something I would develop and offer here as a free plugin… * There are also some paid plugins that offer processing on their server, so plugin will send your PDF to their server and it will respond with thumbnail, but that’s of course resources expensive if it’s used by thousand of websites, so that’s why it’s paid then… * Thread Starter [Guido](https://wordpress.org/support/users/guido07111975/) * (@guido07111975) * [2 months, 2 weeks ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/imagick-library/#post-18802379) * > But wait, you’re saying that you never had problems with PDF thumbnails?  * No, I meant the normal image thumbnails 😉 * Guess I should contact my host, ask them if they can install/activate Imagick. * Thanks so far! * Guido * Plugin Author [kubiq](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kubiq/) * (@kubiq) * [2 months, 2 weeks ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/imagick-library/#post-18802416) * Hmm, yes, if you don’t want to pay for services that will generate that thumbnail on their server, which means also sending your data to them and that can be also some legal problem sometimes, then I guess you need that Imagick… * There are also some SSH commands that can generate PDF thumbs, so theoretically if your server allow you tu run `exec` function with PHP, then also this could work, but it also depends what libraries are there, because if you don’t have Imagick, then maybe you don’t have others too… I think it mostly use `Ghostscript` and `Poppler` so if you have these, then maybe it would be possible also that way… * Thread Starter [Guido](https://wordpress.org/support/users/guido07111975/) * (@guido07111975) * [2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/imagick-library/#post-18814532) * Thanks again. While searching for alternatives [I found some scripts](https://www.npmjs.com/search?q=%22Pdf%20Thumbnail%22) with and without dependencies (no idea whether they work or not), but I fully understand that you prefer to continue to use Imagick, instead of spending a lot of time on researching potential alternatives. * Guido Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total) You must be [logged in](https://login.wordpress.org/?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwordpress.org%2Fsupport%2Ftopic%2Fimagick-library%2F%3Foutput_format%3Dmd&locale=en_US) to reply to this topic. * ![](https://ps.w.org/pdf-thumbnail-generator/assets/icon.svg?rev=2753908) * [PDF Thumbnail Generator](https://wordpress.org/plugins/pdf-thumbnail-generator/) * [Frequently Asked Questions](https://wordpress.org/plugins/pdf-thumbnail-generator/#faq) * [Support Threads](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/pdf-thumbnail-generator/) * [Active Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/pdf-thumbnail-generator/active/) * [Unresolved Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/pdf-thumbnail-generator/unresolved/) * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/pdf-thumbnail-generator/reviews/) ## Tags * [imagick](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/imagick/) * 6 replies * 2 participants * Last reply from: [Guido](https://wordpress.org/support/users/guido07111975/) * Last activity: [2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/imagick-library/#post-18814532) * Status: resolved