I created an easy-to-use library for image resizing. It can be found here on Github.
An example of how to use the library:
// Include PHP Image Magician library
require_once('php_image_magician.php');
// Open JPG image
$magicianObj = new imageLib('racecar.jpg');
// Resize to best fit then crop (check out the other options)
$magicianObj -> resizeImage(100, 200, 'crop');
// Save resized image as a PNG (or jpg, bmp, etc)
$magicianObj -> saveImage('racecar_small.png');
Other features, should you need them, are: