I probably should have answered Phil's question. Once I decided to shell out to ImageMagick I just couldn't see a reason to use PHP from the command-line over Perl. Had the GD libs been the dogs bollox as I had hopped I'd have used PHP of course, but since I was going the shelling out route anyway and since Perl rocks I just didn't see a reason to do it in PHP .... yes .... I think JK has had an effect on me :)