Hour 15. Images On-the-Fly

What You'll Learn in This Hour:

• How to create and output an image

• How to work with colors

• How to draw shapes, including arcs, rectangles, and polygons

• How to fill areas with color

• How to work with TrueType fonts

The functions included in this hour rely on a library called GD which is bundled with PHP.

The GD library is a set of tools that enables programmers to create and work with images on-the-fly. If PHP is compiled with GD support, you can use PHP's image functions to create dynamic images. Due to licensing issues, the bundled library does not support the GIF image format. We will output images as PNGs because they are available by default with the bundled library and are supported by most browsers. With the GD functions you can create sophisticated graphics on-the-fly.