After way too long I've created an Imager 0.44 release candidate. This is available from CPAN as development release 0.43_03.
If you can, please run the Imager test suite. The simplest way to do this is with the CPAN shell:
perl -MCPAN -eshell
test T/TO/TONYC/Imager-0.43_03.tar.gz
All tests successful, 225 subtests skipped. (Score:2)
Files=44, Tests=1423, 16 wallclock secs (11.83 cusr + 1.39 csys = 13.22 CPU)