The rails plugin file_column provides a simple method of handling uploading files. I am using it to store location “avatar” images. The image needs to be resized into several different versions, and file_column handles this nicely with one method call in my model.

file_column :image, :magick => { 
         :versions => { :square => "75x75!", 
                        :profile => "275x260" 
                      }
        }

However, recently requirements changed. I now needed an additional version of the image and change the sizes of the old versions.

Since file_column does not provide an out of the box method of regenerating the images, and I had several thousand records with images associated already I had a problem.