"Any opinions on the best path forward?"

You've been posting problems relating to this task since December last year. You have consistently failed to take peoples advice, you have failed to learn from your mistakes, you have pretty consistently failed to provide the code which you're running (the error message for $images you display here is impossible to generate from the code posted). You've been advised many times on these issues both in reply posts and in CB discussions. Either you're not interested in learning how to do this yourself, or you're not capable. If you just want this to work, pay someone to do if for you.