Dynamic Images without GD support?

[austinderrick2]

Is it possible to do dynamic images without GD support.

[Weedpacket]

Yes#

[pjleonhardt]

hmm, may I inquire how?
is it through another library?
or are you sposed to sit on the server with photoshop open 😉

[Weedpacket]

ImageMagick and The GIMP can both be controlled through the command line.

[austinderrick2]

I don't own the server though... I bought a webhosting package for my website and I wanted to try dynamic images just for the heck of it but the server doesn't have GD support... (At least thats what I think the problem is... I copied and pasted the code from this tutorial: http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/rasmus19990124.php3(the code is

<?
  Header("Content-type: image/gif");
  if(!isset($s)) $s=11;
  $size = imagettfbbox($s,0,"/fonts/TIMES.TTF",$text);
  $dx = abs($size[2]-$size[0]);
  $dy = abs($size[5]-$size[3]);
  $xpad=9;
  $ypad=9;
  $im = imagecreate($dx+$xpad,$dy+$ypad);
  $blue = ImageColorAllocate($im, 0x2c,0x6D,0xAF);
  $black = ImageColorAllocate($im, 0,0,0);
  $white = ImageColorAllocate($im, 255,255,255);
  ImageRectangle($im,0,0,$dx+$xpad-1,$dy+$ypad-1,$black);
  ImageRectangle($im,0,0,$dx+$xpad,$dy+$ypad,$white);
  ImageTTFText($im, $s, 0, (int)($xpad/2)+1, $dy+(int)($ypad/2), $black, "/fonts/TIMES.TTF", $text);
  ImageTTFText($im, $s, 0, (int)($xpad/2), $dy+(int)($ypad/2)-1, $white, "/fonts/TIMES.TTF", $text);
  ImageGif($im);
  ImageDestroy($im);
?> 

) and it gave me the "Cannot find imagettfbbox() function" error or something like that...

[drew010]

the server might still have gd just because the ttf function doesnt work. TTF support is its own library and i find is not very commonly configured with php. also, depending on your version, gif's are no longer writeable since they use an algorithm that is 'owned' by a company and they wont allow use. try something really basic like this (taken off php.net):

<?php
header("Content-type: image/png");
$im = @imagecreate(50, 100)
or die("Cannot Initialize new GD image stream");
$background_color = imagecolorallocate($im, 255, 255, 255);
$text_color = imagecolorallocate($im, 233, 14, 91);
imagestring($im, 1, 5, 5, "A Simple Text String", $text_color);
imagepng($im);
imagedestroy($im);
?>

the other way you can find out is make a php script and inside it just php
<?php phpinfo(); ?>
by itself and see what it says about having gd installed and configured.

[austinderrick2]

That worked thanks! 😃

[austinderrick2]

How do I change the font size/color? It has little bitty red font that I can hardly read lol.

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by austinderrick2
How do I change the font size/color? It has little bitty red font that I can hardly read lol.

Finding out what [man]imagecolorallocate[/man] does might be a good start; followed by looking at what the arguments to [man]imagestring[/man] do.

[drew010]

use the function http://php.net/manual/en/function.imageloadfont.php
to load a font other than the default 5, which are somewhat small.