Hi Joe,
despite all the image manipulation APIs in the Java
standard, there is no way to produce a thumbnail of the same quality
as a "convert -geometry 100x100" command. (Am I right in saying
this?).
Probably. ImageMagick is dedicated to image manipulation, while Java is
really a "jack of all trades", and so I wouldn't be surprised at all.
but the simple fork technique has worked well so far
so I'm not sure if there is any huge advantage to using the JNI path
to ImageMagick.
Convenience and paradigm, really. I've used JMagick before and it lets
you call everything as a Java method, rather than building command(s)
and exec'ing them... but functionally, I don't think there's a difference.
My question is: does anyone have a better solution for thumbnail
generation?
None that I can think of. If java.image or JAI don't give you the
quality you need, then pulling in an external library (ie, ImageMagick)
is your best bet.
Cheers,
Francis