php imagick resize image code not working properly - php

Question

I am using the following Imagick function to resize an image. The code runs and resizes the image, but with an error from the server saying "An error occurred while requesting the document from the testing server." And I cannot detect the problem. In the browser it, however, outputs non-human readable characters. In case I try to output the resized/modified image to the browser, there is no problem. I face this problem as I try to save the image to the disk.
Here is my code:
<?php
imagick_resize('running.jpg');
function imagick_resize($image, $width = 460, $height = 300)
{
// define widescreen dimensions
// $width = 460;
// $height = 300;
// load an image
$i = new Imagick($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/alchemyapi/' . $image);
// get the current image dimensions
$geo = $i->getImageGeometry();
// crop the image
if(($geo['width']/$width) < ($geo['height']/$height))
{
$i->cropImage($geo['width'], floor($height*$geo['width']/$width), 0, (($geo['height']-($height*$geo['width']/$width))/2));
}
else
{
$i->cropImage(ceil($width*$geo['height']/$height), $geo['height'], (($geo['width']-($width*$geo['height']/$height))/2), 0);
}
// thumbnail the image
$i->ThumbnailImage($width,$height,true);
// save or show or whatever the image
# $i->setImageFormat('png');
# header("Content-Type: image/png");
# unlink('small_square_img.png');
$i->writeImage($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/alchemyapi/tmp/small_square_img.png');
# file_put_contents('small_square_img.png', $i);
exit($i);
}
?>

Answer 1

The data you are sending to the browser is not a valid image. It is quite likely that you have a Byte-Order-Marker in some of your files before the
You should check for that and fix it if it is occuring, or provide an example of the "non-human readable characters" for people to have a clue of what the problem is.