Haven’t developed with PHP for a while but now I got a need to do some updates to an older project. The project is based on PHP, MYSQL and HTML (+ jquery) and it also uses TCPDF library for generating PDF files.

After installing XAMPP with PHP 8 and editing some settings, I managed to get stuff working. However, I noticed that the TCPDF won’t work with default XAMPP installation as it rquires GD or ImageMagick library installed.

So I received an error when trying to create a PDF:

TCPDF requires the Imagick or GD extension to handle PNG images with alpha channel.

Installing ImageMagick

It seems that I forgot how annoying installing PHP libraries can be.

I tried many guides, including https://ourcodeworld.com/articles/read/349/how-to-install-and-enable-the-imagick-extension-in-xampp-for-windows without success. There is good discussion here too: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39609951/cannot-load-imagick-library

I always ended with the following error inside Apache error.log even though the file was there:

PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library 'imagick' (tried: C:\\xampp\\php\\ext\\imagick (The specified module could not be found), C:\\xampp\\php\\ext\\php_imagick.dll (The specified module could not be found)) in Unknown on line 0

Then I noticed that I had x86 version installed, but my phpinfo() told that I have x64 php installation. However, installing x64 versions didn’t help, the same problem was still there.

Final solution (for me)

1. Delete ImageMagick if installed previously
2. Check using phpinfo() what version is installed
   • x64 or x86?
   • Thread safety enabled / disabled
   • PHP version

1. Download latest version from https://windows.php.net/downloads/pecl/releases/imagick/
   • I had x64 PHP, thread safety enabled and PHP 8
   • Latest imagick version was 3.6.0rc2
   • So my file was: php_imagick-3.6.0rc2-8.0-ts-vs16-x64.zip from https://windows.php.net/downloads/pecl/releases/imagick/3.6.0rc2/
2. Copy php_imagick.dll to C:\xampp\php\ext
3. Copy all other files to C:\xampp\php
4. Edit php.ini and add the following line under Dynamic Extensions
   • extension=imagick
   • NOTE: In PHP8 the php_ and .dll are not longer used in extension filename
5. Restart Apache