Sites that generate images

[Callan S.]

Some sites can generate images, like PNG or such. Like cooltext.com and such?

I was wondering how they do that? I had an idea that would involve generating an image then storing it, for any future references.

[hallsofvallhalla]

i have been wanting to look into this myself but have not got the chance.

[Jackolantern]

This is done server-side with one of two libraries: GD, which is included with PHP, and ImageMagick. Neither of them are particularly intuitive, but IM definitely has more power than GD. I believe IM is included with some distributions of PHP as well. I would suggest to go with IM.

[Xaleph]

Yeah, GD or GD2. Where the latter is far superior to the first. ImageMagick is not avaiable in default PHP packages I believe. GD2 has a default PEAR package. Anway, it comes down to this. If you have GD2 installed, you can use a complete PHP library for image manipulation. Same goes for IM, but it`s a tad more difficult to install.

Anway, GD2 is also available in Java, C, C# (?) i`m not sure on that one... And some more. IM i`m not sure about. Never really used that one. There`s bound to be more though.

[hallsofvallhalla]

Thanks for the info!

[Callan S.]

Thanks for the info, guys! As I'm currenly using a free host, not sure if GD will be installed - I'll poke around latter and see.

[Jackolantern]

The vast majority of free hosts do not have it installed because it can eat up a fair amount of the CPU if it is used to make pixel-by-pixel images (which both GD and IM can do).