Thread:Project:Support desk/$wgMaxImageArea using GD results in WSOD/reply

To get the error message of the WSOD, look at Manual:How to debug. That's usually caused by a fatal PHP error, which is usually logged in the apache error_log file.

If your image is huge, the problem may be an "out of memory". You may try increasing memory_limit to something higher (128M or even 256M).