Hi Bruce.
Alchemy is not working yet with postgresql. We are working on it and will have it with the next release (2.2), that we plan to release in the next couple of days.
You can try using the master branch from github:
gem 'alchemy_cms', :git => 'git://
github.com/magiclabs/alchemy_cms'
But the 'alchemy_spree' gem is not yet alchemy 2.2 compatible, so this will propably not work.
The crashing while uploading pictures are caused mostly because of a faulty ImageMagick installation. Try to reinstall with --disable-openmp option.
I never tried alchemy on heroku, so I can't say anything about it. But like I said, we currently working on postgresql compatibilty. So this will propably fix this.
Greetings
Thomas
magic labs*