CoreImage is fast
Running the same resize via CoreImage and ImageMagick on a folder of files containing 53 images totalling 95.1 MB shows how fast CoreImage is.
The test systems:
- PowerMac G5: 2x2Ghz PowerPC G5, 3.5 GB RAM, nVidia GeForce FX5200
- xServe: 4x2GHz Intel Core 2 Xeon, 1 GB RAM, ATi Radeon X1300
The results:
| System | CoreImage | ImageMagick |
|---|---|---|
| PowerMac | 2m35.394s | 3m27.005s |
| xServe | 0m23.617s | 1m0.678s |
As you can see, even on older systems, CoreImage blows a CPU image converter like ImageMagick away. Anybody running a OS X based server should look into using CoreImage. There is already a good guide out there for Ruby on Rails users.
(A note on result times: I took CoreImage’s slowest run, and ImageMagick’s fastest run)