Are there any best practices or recommended libraries for image manipulation in PHP that could be used instead of the current approach?

The current approach of using PHP's built-in GD library for image manipulation can be improved by utilizing more advanced libraries like Intervention Image. Intervention Image provides a more user-friendly API and offers a wider range of image manipulation functions compared to GD.

// Install Intervention Image using Composer
composer require intervention/image

// Implementing image manipulation using Intervention Image
use Intervention\Image\ImageManagerStatic as Image;

// Open an image file
$img = Image::make('example.jpg');

// Resize the image
$img->resize(300, 200);

// Save the manipulated image
$img->save('example_resized.jpg');