Why You Should Stop Using Imagick for PDF Previews (And What to Do Instead)

Why You Should Stop Using Imagick for PDF Previews (And What to Do Instead)

If you manage a web application where users upload documents, you’ve undoubtedly run into that classic Friday afternoon nightmare: a user uploads a heavy, complex PDF, and the server suddenly crashes due to memory exhaustion.

Nine times out of ten, the culprit is Imagick. But how did we end up relying so heavily on this module, and why has it become such a massive bottleneck today? Let’s take a step back to understand the root of the problem.