Filling polygons: Imager vs GD

HASM has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

At a given point of some processing I have a list of polygons (an array of arrays of x y coordinates).
I want to generate a .png image of the filled polygons. There are a few modules I can use, GD, Imager, ImageMagick, PDL, maybe more.
I've tried GD vs Imager as in:

use GD;
my $img = new GD::Image ($width, $height);
my $black = $img->colorAllocate (0,0,0);
my $white = $img->colorAllocate (255,255,255);
map {
  my $polygon = GD::Polygon->new;
  map { $polygon->addPt (round ($_->[0] * $scale - $minx),
                 round ($maxy - $_->[1] * $scale)); } @{$_};
  $img->filledPolygon ($polygon,$white);
} @polygons;
print $img->png ();
[download]

use Imager;
my $img = Imager->new (xsize=>$width, ysize=>$height,
                       channels=>1, bits=>8);
map {
  my @polygon = ();
  map { push (@polygon,
          [round ($_->[0] * $scale - $minx),
           round ($maxy - $_->[1] * $scale)]) } @{$_};
  $img->polygon (points=>\@polygon, color=>'white');
} @polygons;
$img->write (fd => fileno(STDOUT), type=>'png');
[download]

For a sample set size of 12690 polygons, generating a 7917x38558 image, the GD approach runs in about 7 seconds, the Imager approach runs in about 209 seconds, a very large difference.

Cursory inspection with top reveals very similar memory and CPU requirements

What am I overlooking, or is this the way it is?

Comment on Filling polygons: Imager vs GD Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Filling polygons: Imager vs GD by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Sep 26, 2013 at 05:05 UTC
the GD approach runs in about 7 seconds, the Imager approach runs in about 209 seconds, Best guess: GD uses a faster polygon fill algorithm; or is better optimised than Imager With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday' Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error. "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.	[reply]
Re: Filling polygons: Imager vs GD by stonecolddevin (Parson) on Sep 26, 2013 at 21:01 UTC
At any rate, we have an image service that scales full size images (like, the size of a yearbook image, for instance) that uses GD and has no trouble with speed (in terms of scaling said images), so I'd be inclined to use GD just for its battle tested-ness. Three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax, you're god damn right I'm living in the fucking past	[reply]
Re: Filling polygons: Imager vs GD by tonyc (Hermit) on Oct 01, 2013 at 23:04 UTC
Not that I expect it accounts for all of the speed differences, but Imager draws anti-aliased filled polygons, while GD doesn't. Pre-calculating the 'white' with something like: `my $white = Imager::Color->new("white"); ... $img->polygon (points=>\@polygon, color=>$white);` [download] may also help a little, though it's likely to drown in the worked needed to actually draw the polygons. Imager has other inefficiencies in filling areas that probably make some difference too.	[reply] [d/l]