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Sites that generate images
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 7:41 am
by 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.
Re: Sites that generate images
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 10:57 am
by hallsofvallhalla
i have been wanting to look into this myself but have not got the chance.
Re: Sites that generate images
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 10:23 pm
by 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.
Re: Sites that generate images
Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2011 12:53 pm
by 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.
Re: Sites that generate images
Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2011 1:52 pm
by hallsofvallhalla
Thanks for the info!
Re: Sites that generate images
Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2011 1:50 am
by 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.
Re: Sites that generate images
Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2011 2:48 am
by 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).