Create Image From Url Any File Type

Maybe you want this:

$jpeg_image = imagecreatefromfile( 'photo.jpeg' );
$gif_image = imagecreatefromfile( 'clipart.gif' );
$png_image = imagecreatefromfile( 'transparent_checkerboard.PnG' );
$another_jpeg = imagecreatefromfile( 'picture.JPG' );
// This requires you to remove or rewrite file_exists check:
$jpeg_image = imagecreatefromfile( 'http://example.net/photo.jpeg' );
// SEE BELOW HO TO DO IT WHEN http:// ARGS IS NEEDED:
$jpeg_image = imagecreatefromfile( 'http://example.net/photo.jpeg?foo=hello&bar=world' );

Here's how it's done:

function imagecreatefromfile( $filename ) {
    if (!file_exists($filename)) {
        throw new InvalidArgumentException('File "'.$filename.'" not found.');
    }
    switch ( strtolower( pathinfo( $filename, PATHINFO_EXTENSION ))) {
        case 'jpeg':
        case 'jpg':
            return imagecreatefromjpeg($filename);
        break;

        case 'png':
            return imagecreatefrompng($filename);
        break;

        case 'gif':
            return imagecreatefromgif($filename);
        break;

        default:
            throw new InvalidArgumentException('File "'.$filename.'" is not valid jpg, png or gif image.');
        break;
    }
}

With some small modifications to switch same function is ready for web url's:

    /* if (!file_exists($filename)) {
        throw new InvalidArgumentException('File "'.$filename.'" not found.');
    } <== This needs addiotional checks if using non local picture */
    switch ( strtolower( array_pop( explode('.', substr($filename, 0, strpos($filename, '?'))))) ) {
        case 'jpeg':

After that you can use it with http://www.tld/image.jpg:

$jpeg_image = imagecreatefromfile( 'http://example.net/photo.jpeg' );
$gif_image = imagecreatefromfile( 'http://www.example.com/art.gif?param=23&another=yes' );

Some proofs:

As you can read from official PHP manual function.imagecreatefromjpeg.php GD allows loading images from URLs that is supported by function.fopen.php, so there is no need to fetch image first and save it to file, and open that file.

run

 $data = getimagesize("/home/logo.jpg");
 var_dump($data);

and make sure that the MIME TYPE of the image is image/jpeg

another reason might be that the path to the file is not true (maybe you need to remove the starting "/" and leave only imagecreatefromjpeg("home/logo.jpg") [if the home directory is in the same level as your php file - than you should]

The following works fine when executed at the end of the code posted in the question:

String url = imagesService.getServingUrl(newBlobKey)

The URL can then be used to scale and crop the new image as described in the docs http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/java/images/overview.html#Transforming_Images_from_the_Blobstore