Image processing failure in production despite local success

Root Cause: Silent GD Fallback

The production failure is almost certainly caused by TYPO3 silently falling back to GD when the configured ImageMagick or GraphicsMagick binary is not executable by the www-data user. No exception is thrown; the only trace is a deprecation log entry Processor not available. GD cannot perform GIFBUILDER text rendering (TEXT, SHADOW, EMBOSS), PDF thumbnail generation, EPS/PS processing, ICC color profile handling, complex masked composites, or animated GIF manipulation — operations that work locally because your CLI user has binary access.

Operations That Require ImageMagick/GraphicsMagick

• GIFBUILDER text rendering — vector text on raster backgrounds (TEXT, SHADOW, EMBOSS objects)
• PDF thumbnail generation — first-page rasterization
• EPS/PostScript processing
• ICC color profile conversion
• Complex composites with masks
• Animated GIF manipulation (multi-frame)

GD supports basic resize, crop, rotate, and simple overlays only.

Verify Binary Access for www-data

Run these commands as the web-server user, not as root:

sudo -u www-data /usr/bin/convert -version
sudo -u www-data /usr/bin/gm -version
sudo -u www-data php -r "var_dump(exec('which convert 2>&1'));
var_dump(exec('which gm 2>&1'));"
sudo -u www-data php -r "echo ini_get('open_basedir');"
sudo -u www-data php -r "echo ini_get('disable_functions');"

If open_basedir excludes /usr/bin/ or disable_functions contains exec, proc_open, shell_exec, passthru, or system, the binary will be unreachable even if present and executable.

ApplicationContext-Based [GFX][processor_path] Strategy

Use environment variables to keep binary paths out of version control. For TYPO3 v12+ with Composer:

# config/sites/<site>/config.yaml
GFX:
  processor: 'ImageMagick'
  processor_path: '%env(IMAGEMAGICK_PATH)%'

Define IMAGEMAGICK_PATH per environment via .env (local), Docker secrets, or Kubernetes secrets:

# .env.local
IMAGEMAGICK_PATH=/opt/homebrew/bin/

# .env.production
IMAGEMAGICK_PATH=/usr/bin/

For v11 or non-Composer installs, use typo3conf/system/additional.php (loads after LocalConfiguration.php):

$context = getenv('TYPO3_CONTEXT') ?: 'Development';
$paths = [
    'Production' => '/usr/bin/',
    'Development' => '/opt/local/bin/',
];
$GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['GFX']['processor_path'] = $paths[$context] ?? '/usr/bin/';

Ensure [GFX][processor] matches the installed binary type (ImageMagick → convert, GraphicsMagick → gm).

Verification Checklist

1. Confirm active processor in Install Tool → Configuration → [GFX]
2. Create a test page with a GIFBUILDER TEXT object; missing text confirms GD fallback
3. Check typo3temp/var/log/deprecation_*.log for Processor not available
4. Run the sudo -u www-data verification commands above

One Missing Diagnostic

Which TYPO3 version are you running? The site-config %env()% syntax requires v12+ with symfony/dotenv; v11 needs the additional.php approach.