[Slightly OT] Standardizing image uploads/making thumbnails

[jonathan vanasco]

I'm trying to figure out a way to standardize image uploads and make 
thumbnails

What have people here found good to use (a2/mp2)?
As far as CPAN mods/interfaces go
        GD seems to be faster , but it looks  awful
        ImageMagick looks better, more stress on the server
        Imager looks  simple, but even more stress
Some of those have Apache mods that  are long unmaintained
The  netpbm suite looks ok, but  a potential hassle as it would require 
several pipes to do a transform