Trouble with using Fleximage plugin and getting .operate to save changes

I'm using the Fleximage plugin to manage image files in my rails project.

This must be dirt simple, but I can't figure it out for the life of me

I'm trying to create a thumbnail record. Initially I copy the master image record, and then I try to operate on it to make some changes but the changes are never saved to the database?? I tried to output the length of the image data to see if it changed and at all and it was totally unaffected. This seems like it should work??

  thumbnail = Visualization.create(self.attributes)
  thumbnail.picture_id = self.id
  thumbnail.style = 'thumbnail'
  thumbnail.save!
  puts "Length = " + thumbnail.image_file_data.to_s.length.to_s
  thumbnail.operate do |image|
    image.resize '100x100'
    image.shadow :color      => 'black',    # or color(0, 0, 0)
      :background => 'white',    # or color(255, 255, 255)
      :blur       => 8,
      :offset     => '3x3',
      :opacity    => 0.75    
  end      
  thumbnail.save!
  puts "Length = " + thumbnail.image_file_data.to_s.length.to_s

Solution

I figured this out

Instead of operate I needed to use operate!