JCOGS Image

Advanced Image Manipulation for EE5, EE6, and EE7

JCOGS Image is a simple to use tag based image processing add-on for ExpressionEngine 5, 6 and 7. It is fast, efficient and provides a range of image manipulation options that go beyond those available within EE’s built in image processing services.

What’s new in Version 1.3?

Version 1.3 is a major update to the JCOGS Image add-on. For a complete list of the changes introduced for this version see the add-on’s changelog entry. Key developments include: significant changes in the JCOGS Image codebase to improve performance, reliability and to support future developments; new noise and dot image filters; new square and rectangle mask filters; new support for the CE Image Average_color variable; passthrough support for animated gif and svg files; significantly improved cache management and audit functions.

What does JCOGS Image do?

• Image Format Conversion
  Change the image format used by an image. Currently the add-on supports changing image formats between bmp, gif, jpg (standard and interaced), png and webp image formats.
• Resizing
  Crop and resize images. Images can be resized to fit into a defined space (either contain or cover). Image cropping can use nominated aspect ratios and can be combined with rescaling. By default Image will preserve an image’s aspect ratio, but you can use resizing to distort an image if required.
• Manipulations
  Apply a range of image effects to an image. Current options include rotation, horizontal and / or vertical flips and the application of a range of image filters (e.g. greyscale, blur etc). Filters can be combined sequentially, and can be applied to converted / resized images. JCOGS Image also supports standard shape image masks (e.g. polygons, stars, circles, boxes) and custom masks. See the documentation for more details of the filters available.
• Simplify building fast responsive pages
  JCOGS Image provides powerful extra features - such as automatically configured Lazy Loading (fully supporting progressive enhancement), and automatic generation of repsponsive versions of images (by generating srcset and sizes parameters for img tags, along with necessary size variants).

Why choose JCOGS Image?

• It is up to date!
  JCOGS Image has been tested on EE5, EE6 and EE7 installations and is compatible with php 7.4, 8, 8.1 and 8.2
• Single Image or Batch Processing
  Use a template tag to modify a single image or to apply the same modifications to all the images within a content block - or a mix of the two since the nesting of JCOGS Image tags is supported.
• Remote or Local Image Sources
  JCOGS Image works equally well with locally stored images or images obtained from internet based sources.
• Flexible Caching Options
  JCOGS Image has a powerful SEO friendly caching system for the images it generates; cache options can be set globally and then overwritten on a tag-by-tag basis through parameter options.
• Active Support
  JCOGS Image is actively supported, both in terms of new feature development and in terms of responding to any issues encountered during use of the add-on.

“Drop-in” upgrades for sites using CE Image

JCOGS Image unlocks a simple upgrade path for existing EE5 and EE6 for sites developed using the CE-Img add-on.

Although based on a completely new image processing code base, JCOGS Image has been designed to have strong compatiblity with CE Image parameters and functions: in many cases it is possible to upgrade an existing site without loss of function simply doing a search / replace to update the tag name used: for example changing {exp:ce_img:single...} to {exp:jcogs_img:single...}.

Please Note: A few CE Image functions are not replicated (e.g. ASCIIart) and for some uses (e.g. the pixelate filter) there are some small differences in the output produced. See the documentation for more details.

Requirements

JCOGS Image has been tested and is supported for use on EE5, EE6 and EE7 systems. It requires the server hosting the EE installation to be running php 7.4 (or better) and some version of the GD/GD2 library; JCOGS Image operates normally on php 8 / 8.1 / 8.2 systems.

Fully supported, ongoing development…

If you have features that you would like to see included in a future version of JCOGS Image get in touch! Currently in the development pipeline:

• Auto-generation of <picture> HTML tags e.g to provide alternate images for .webp images on sites using static caching (JCOGS Image already provides this webp backup on sites that do not use static caching!)
• Enhanced support for SVG Image format
• Adding the ability to put a drop-shadow around an image
• Add option to write arbitrary information into image EXIF data area
• Better support for php image processing libraries (e.g. Imagemagick)