pass Imagick output to another function with Imagick (no saving) - php

Question

I have two function in two separate class, both have some Imagick processing.
I want the first Imagick to resize image and then send it to another Imagick instance without saving it as a file.
In the first class crop
function cropimage($inputfile){
$image = new Imagick($inputfile);
$image->cropimage($w, $h, $x, $y);
# and here I wish to return some $image->output???() which let me to use it in second class
return ????;
}
And in second class resize
function resizeImage(){
$crop = new crop(); // my first class instance
$image_to_work = $crop->cropimage($this->image); // output from first class
$image = new Imagick($image_to_work);
$image->resizeImage($width, $height);
$image->writeImage($outputfile);
}
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.
Cheers

Answer 1

Images can be passed around as variables:
function cropimage($inputfile) {
$image = new Imagick($inputfile);
$image->cropimage($w, $h, $x, $y);
return $image;
}
function resizeImageAndSave($image) {
$image->resizeImage($width, $height);
$image->writeImage($outputfile);
}
$image = cropimage("./test.png"); // return the image
resizeImageAndSave($image); // pass it into the next function

Answer 2

Use sessions.
First, make sure you have session_start() in every script that will utilize sessions.
Then do something like $_SESSION['image'] = $image and then your next script can access that session variable.