imagettftext

add a note User Contributed Notes

Tom Pike
04-Oct-2006 11:48


Ref: Craig at frostycoolslug dot com



"Using the negative of a color index has the effect of turning off antialiasing."



This is true, but only if the image has been created with imagecreate() (as opposed to imagecreatetruecolor())

Craig at frostycoolslug dot com
28-Sep-2006 10:54


This one caught me out a little bit as confusing, so in an attempt to help others..



"Using the negative of a color index has the effect of turning off antialiasing."



Simply put:



<?php



$textColour = ImageColorAllocate($image, 255, 255, 255);

ImageTTFText($image, 8, 0, 0, 0, -$textColour, $font, $text);



?>



Note the - (minus) before the $textColor in ImageTTFText, this creates the negative colour index, and switches off AA on text.

webmaster at higher-designs dot com
16-Aug-2006 01:16


I spent days looking for this, couldn't find it, so just made it myself. This is an ultra simple text banner that keeps the text pretty much centered (not perfect when text is angled) vertically and horizontally. Size, font, colors are easy to edit and in HTML version for the colors.



Any additions (maybe for multi-line functionality) can be added if you desire.



<?php

### Declare this script will be displayed as a PNG image.

header("Content-type: image/png");



####################### BEGIN USER EDITS #######################

$imagewidth = 500;

$imageheight = 100;

$fontsize = "20";

$fontangle = "0";

$font = "arial.ttf";

$text = "123456789";

$backgroundcolor = "003366";

$textcolor = "FFCC66";

######################## END USER EDITS ########################



### Convert HTML backgound color to RGB

if( eregi( "([0-9a-f]{2})([0-9a-f]{2})([0-9a-f]{2})", $backgroundcolor, $bgrgb ) )

{$bgred = hexdec( $bgrgb[1] );   $bggreen = hexdec( $bgrgb[2] );   $bgblue = hexdec( $bgrgb[3] );}



### Convert HTML text color to RGB

if( eregi( "([0-9a-f]{2})([0-9a-f]{2})([0-9a-f]{2})", $textcolor, $textrgb ) )

{$textred = hexdec( $textrgb[1] );   $textgreen = hexdec( $textrgb[2] );   $textblue = hexdec( $textrgb[3] );}



### Create image

$im = imagecreate( $imagewidth, $imageheight );



### Declare image's background color

$bgcolor = imagecolorallocate($im, $bgred,$bggreen,$bgblue);



### Declare image's text color

$fontcolor = imagecolorallocate($im, $textred,$textgreen,$textblue);



### Get exact dimensions of text string

$box = @imageTTFBbox($fontsize,$fontangle,$font,$text);



### Get width of text from dimensions

$textwidth = abs($box[4] - $box[0]);



### Get height of text from dimensions

$textheight = abs($box[5] - $box[1]);



### Get x-coordinate of centered text horizontally using length of the image and length of the text

$xcord = ($imagewidth/2)-($textwidth/2)-2;



### Get y-coordinate of centered text vertically using height of the image and height of the text

$ycord = ($imageheight/2)+($textheight/2);



### Declare completed image with colors, font, text, and text location

imagettftext ( $im, $fontsize, $fontangle, $xcord, $ycord, $fontcolor, $font, $text );



### Display completed image as PNG

imagepng($im);



### Close the image

imagedestroy($im);

?>

jwe
25-Jul-2006 02:48


I found this line a little confusing:



"May include decimal numeric character references (of the form: &#8364;) to access characters in a font beyond position 127."



I was using a font that had apostrophes and quotes stored in a non-standard position, and so they were being rendered as spaces by imagettftext.  This line seemed to suggest a solution, but it took a while to figure it out.



Turns out, a "decimal numeric character reference" is a decimal conversion of the hex value of the *unicode* position of the character you want.  For a while I was trying ASCII positions (I knew the ALT+ code for typing the character I needed in Windows).



In the Windows XP character map, the unicode positions are shown as U+2018 or U+201C, etc.  Ignore the U+ and convert that hex number to decimal, and then stick that in your text string with the &# on the front and ; on the end, and pass it to imagettftext.



--Julian

jwe
19-Jul-2006 11:48


Quick tip for anyone who is receiving text like in the example in this page (ie: through $_GET['text'] or something similar) and needs to format the text into multiple lines.  The trick is finding the spaces...



<?php

$text = $_GET['text'];

// for a maximum of 38 characters on a line...

while(strlen($text) > 38) {

   $startPoint = 37;

   // find a space to break the line on

   while(substr($text, $startPoint, 1) != " ") {

        $startPoint--;

   }

   $line[] = trim(substr($text, 0, $startPoint));

   $text = substr($text, $startPoint);

}

$line[] = trim($text);

?>



The result is an array called $line that contains all the lines of text you need to output in order.



The only tasks left are to determine the correct height of the image based on the font size you want to use.  Don't forget to leave some padding space for punctuation and descenders between lines (commas, g, q, p, y, etc).



imagettftext is unbelievably useful when you need to create header images using non-standard fonts.  Amazing.  Huge thanks to the devs.



--Julian

admin at sgssweb dot com
01-May-2006 07:08


Another way of the bellow. After creating a child class of GMIPluggableSet class, which should override two method: getExpression() and getVariables(), throw it to a instance of FontImageGenerator class.

For example, the code follows:



<?php



require_once 'package.fig.php';



class SampleFontImagePluggableSet

    extends GMIPluggableSet

{

    var $defaultVariables = array(

        "text" => null,

        "size" => null,

        "font" => null,

        "color" => "0x000000",

        "alpha" => "100",

        "padding" => 0,

        "width" => null,

        "height" => null,

        "align" => "left",

        "valign" => "middle",

        "bgcolor" => "0xffffff",

        "antialias" => 4

    );

    

    function SampleFontImagePluggableSet() {

        parent::GMIPluggableSet();

    }

    

    function getExpression() {

        return "size {width}, {height};".

               "autoresize none;".

               "type gif, 256, {color: {bgcolor}};".

               "padding {padding};".

               "color {color: {bgcolor}};".

               "fill;".

               "color {color: {color}, {alpha}};".

               "antialias {antialias};".

               "font {font}, {size};".

               "string {text}, 0, 0, {width}, {height}, {align}, {valign};";

    }

    

    function getVariables() {

        return array_merge($this->defaultVariables, $_GET);

    }

}



$pluggableSet = new SampleFontImagePluggableSet();

$fig = new FontImageGenerator();

$fig->setPluggableSet($pluggableSet);

$fig->execute();



?>



This output a image with the text defined in $_GET['text'], the font in $_GET['font'], the text color in $_GET['color'], the background in $_GET['bgcolor'], and so on.



The script file is available at: http://sgssweb.com/experiments/?file=PHPFontImageGenerator .

admin at sgssweb dot com
30-Apr-2006 02:17


I wrote two classes: PHP Abstract Drawing Toolkit and PHP Graphics, the elements of PHP Font Image Generator2. An instance of the class Graphics can draw multi-sampling antialiased text, 7 horizontal alignment of text box (left, center, right, left-adjust, center-adjust, right-adjust, adjust), 3 vertical alignment (top, middle, bottom), and other Java-like methods.



<?php

require_once "package.graphics.php";



$canvas = new Canvas();

$canvas->setSize(400, 400);

$g =& $canvas->getGraphics();

$g->setColor(new Color(0xffffff));

$g->fill();

$g->setColor(new Color(0, 0, 0, 80));

$g->setFont(new Font($_POST['font'], 20));

$g->drawString($_POST['text'], 0, 0, 400, 400, 'center-adjust', 'middle');

$canvas->complete();

$canvas->output();



?>



The class script is here.

http://sgssweb.com/experiments/?file=PHPFontImageGenerator2

jpetsel at riverviewtech dot net
28-Apr-2006 03:06


I was looking at ugo's center and it was great for left to right centering, but it wouldn't center up and down.  So with some changes to suit my needs this is what I came up with.  Some of the notations are just for my edifcation so may mean nothing for you all but you will see I added a $posy that helps with centering up and down.  I was also feeding my feilds from a form.



<?php

// Set the content-type

header("Content-type: image/png");



//1line per column

$text=array(0=>$_POST['linei'],1=>$_POST['lineii'],

2=>$_POST['lineiii'],3=>$_POST['lineiv'],4=>$_POST['linev']);



$Image_Width=400;

$Text_Size=$_POST['textsize'];

$Image_Height=400;



// Create the image

$im = imagecreatetruecolor ($Image_Width, $Image_Height); /* Create a blank image */



// Create some colors

$white = imagecolorallocate($im, 255, 255, 255);

$grey = imagecolorallocate($im, 128, 128, 128);

$black = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 0, 0);

imagefilledrectangle($im, 1, 1, 398, 398, $white);



// Replace path by your own font path

$font = $_POST['font_name'];



for ($i=0; $i < sizeof($text); $i++) {



    //Center the text

    $Text_Box_Size = imagettfbbox($Text_Size, 0, $font, $text[$i]);

    $Text_Box_Width = abs($Text_Box_Size[2] + $Text_Box_Size[0]);

    $Text_Box_Height = abs($Text_Box_Size[7] + $Text_Box_Size[1]);

    $Text_Height = $Text_Height + $Text_Box_Height;

    $posx = ($Image_Width - $Text_Box_Width) / 2;

    $posy = ($Image_Height - $Text_Box_Height * sizeof($text)) / 2 + $Text_Height;



    /*

    Add the text (***array imagettftext ( resource image, float size, float angle, 

    int x, int y, int color, string fontfile, string text )***)

    */

    

    imagettftext($im, $Text_Size, 0, $posx, $posy, $black, $font, $text[$i]);

}



// Using imagepng() results in clearer text compared with imagejpeg()

imagepng($im);

imagedestroy($im);

?>

ugo dot quaisse at gmail dot com
19-Apr-2006 09:03


This is a script that aim at center the (multi) lines :



<?php

header("Content-type: image/png");



//1line per column

$text=array(0=>"line 1",1=>"line 2");



$largeur=500;

$line_height=30;

$hauteur=sizeof($text)*$line_height;



// Create the image

$im = imagecreatetruecolor($largeur, $hauteur);



// Create some colors

$white = imagecolorallocate($im, 255, 255, 255);

$grey = imagecolorallocate($im, 225, 225, 225);

$blue = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 62, 126);

imagefilledrectangle($im, 0, 0, $largeur, $hauteur, $white);



// Replace path by your own font path

$font = 'font.ttf';



for($i=0;$i<=sizeof($text);$i++) {

//Center the text

$size = imagettfbbox(20, 0, $font, $text[$i]);

$long_text = $size[2]+$size[0];

$posx=($largeur-$long_text)/2;

// Add the text

imagettftext($im, 20, 0, $posx, $line_height+$line_height*$i, $blue, $font, $text[$i]);

}



imagepng($im);

imagedestroy($im);

?>

mats dot engstrom at gmail dot com
28-Mar-2006 06:23


I'll second the note from --colobri--.  



Just adding --with-ttf and --with-freetype-dir=/usr/lib/ on the ./configure and then doing a "make; make install" is not enough.



I had to do a "make clean" and then a "make install" in order to get the FreeType-support enabled.



Here are my relevant ./configure lines:

--with-gd \

--enable-gd-native-ttf \

--with-ttf \

--with-freetype-dir=/usr/lib/ \

--with-jpeg-dir=/usr/lib/libjpeg.so.62 \

--enable-exif \

admin at phpru dot com
01-Mar-2006 01:52


On my conf: php5.1.2+apache 1.33

iconv() function works very well with all cyrillic encodings, so you needn't to write your function like win2uni

--Colibri--
29-Jan-2006 04:53


If you have configured and compiled PHP with all the necessary command-line options and still get the error:



Fatal error: Call to undefined function imagettftext()



Try doing a "make clean"  before building the php apache module:



./configure [...]

make clean

make

make install 



This may solve your problem (and hopefully keep you from wasting hours trying different compile options!)

nospam at nospam dot nospam
23-Jan-2006 07:51


I've found that upsampling your text by a factor of 8 or more can really improve the readability of generated text, especially in smaller font sizes (9 or less). I find it also helps with fonts that have kerning to reduce space between letters such as capital T and capital A (TA) where the top-right of the T will be cut off due to GD "features".



I can't tell you, the reader, exactly how to do this, as it will depend on how you are currently generating your text, but essentially what you want to try doing is upsize your font by a factor of 8 and then scale down the resulting image by the same factor.



So if you were using font size 10, use font size 80 and use imagecopyresampled() to divide the width/height down again by 8. The resulting image will be a few pixels different in width / height compared to direct text writing, so make sure to check your image sizes if you are using fixed dimensions.



Play around with other factors, 16 is a bit nicer but results in a higher CPU/RAM load when processing. Any higher is unnecessary I think. If possible you should also cache the image to a file instead of reprocessing it each request.

Mer`Zikain
11-Jan-2006 04:41


I was looking for a way to add kerning to my text and finally just made this function to do it. Of course, if you're generating the size of the image based on the text you're putting in it, you'll have to figure out the new size to fit the new text width but I'm sure you can figure that out.



for($i=0;$i<strlen($text);$i++){

        // Get single character

    $value=substr($text,$i,1);

    if($pval){ // check for existing previous character

        list($lx,$ly,$rx,$ry) = imagettfbbox($fontsize,0,$font,$pval);

        $nxpos+=$rx+3;

    }else{

        $nxpos=0;

    }

        // Add the letter to the image

    imagettftext($im, $fontsize, 0, $nxpos, $ypos, $fontcolor, $font, $value);

    $pval=$value; // save current character for next loop

}

webmaster at oxygenws dot com
18-Dec-2005 06:28


Developers who want to write Persian(Farsi) or Arabic characters to the image can use the following function.

http://developer.berlios.de/projects/persian-log2vis/

a4W
24-Oct-2005 03:28


This function will make your text bold:

<?php

function drawboldtext($image, $size, $angle, $x_cord, $y_cord, $r, $g, $b, $fontfile, $text) 

{ 

   $color = ImageColorAllocate($image, $r, $g, $b); 

   $_x = array(1, 0, 1, 0, -1, -1, 1, 0, -1); 

   $_y = array(0, -1, -1, 0, 0, -1, 1, 1, 1); 

   for($n=0;$n<=8;$n++) 

   { 

      ImageTTFText($image, $size, $angle, $x_cord+$_x[$n], $y_cord+$_y[$n], $color, $fontfile, $text); 

   } 

} 

?>

limalopex.eisfux.de
04-Oct-2005 12:17


If you have problems displaying german umlauts or other chars with an ascii value > 127, try to convert the text-parameter first. The following function converts character-values > 127 (both: UTF-8 + ANSI) to HTML's numeric coded entities:



<?php

define('EMPTY_STRING', '');



function foxy_utf8_to_nce( 

  $utf = EMPTY_STRING 

) { 

  if($utf == EMPTY_STRING) return($utf); 



  $max_count = 5; // flag-bits in $max_mark ( 1111 1000 == 5 times 1) 

  $max_mark = 248; // marker for a (theoretical ;-)) 5-byte-char and mask for a 4-byte-char; 



  $html = EMPTY_STRING; 

  for($str_pos = 0; $str_pos < strlen($utf); $str_pos++) { 

    $old_chr = $utf{$str_pos}; 

    $old_val = ord( $utf{$str_pos} ); 

    $new_val = 0; 



    $utf8_marker = 0; 



    // skip non-utf-8-chars 

    if( $old_val > 127 ) { 

      $mark = $max_mark; 

      for($byte_ctr = $max_count; $byte_ctr > 2; $byte_ctr--) { 

        // actual byte is utf-8-marker? 

        if( ( $old_val & $mark  ) == ( ($mark << 1) & 255 ) ) { 

          $utf8_marker = $byte_ctr - 1; 

          break; 

        } 

        $mark = ($mark << 1) & 255; 

      } 

    } 



    // marker found: collect following bytes 

    if($utf8_marker > 1 and isset( $utf{$str_pos + 1} ) ) { 

      $str_off = 0; 

      $new_val = $old_val & (127 >> $utf8_marker); 

      for($byte_ctr = $utf8_marker; $byte_ctr > 1; $byte_ctr--) { 



        // check if following chars are UTF8 additional data blocks 

        // UTF8 and ord() > 127 

        if( (ord($utf{$str_pos + 1}) & 192) == 128 ) { 

          $new_val = $new_val << 6; 

          $str_off++; 

          // no need for Addition, bitwise OR is sufficient 

          // 63: more UTF8-bytes; 0011 1111 

          $new_val = $new_val | ( ord( $utf{$str_pos + $str_off} ) & 63 ); 

        } 

        // no UTF8, but ord() > 127 

        // nevertheless convert first char to NCE 

        else { 

          $new_val = $old_val; 

        } 

      } 

      // build NCE-Code 

      $html .= '&#'.$new_val.';'; 

      // Skip additional UTF-8-Bytes 

      $str_pos = $str_pos + $str_off; 

    } 

    else { 

      $html .= chr($old_val); 

      $new_val = $old_val; 

    } 

  } 

  return($html); 

}

?>

alexey at NOSPAMPLS dot ozerov dot de
31-Aug-2005 03:30


Notice that the path to the TrueType font has to be included in open_basedir list if open_basedir restriction is activated in php.ini.

gav-alex at bk dot ru
11-Aug-2005 12:05


Hi all!

When my hoster updated his php's libs at first minutes i've got the same problem as some of you.

Php couldn't find the path to true type fonts.

The solution in my case was to make the path look like this

<?php

imagettftext($im, 20, 0, 620, 260, $secondary_color, "./tahoma.ttf" , "NEWS");

?>

so as you can see i simply added "./"



another tip that i wanted to add here is how to write in RUssian on image using imagettftext

you simply have to change the function argument like this

<?php

imagettftext($im, 15, 0, 575, 300, $secondary_color, "./tahoma.ttf" , win2uni("some word in russian"));

 ?>

where win2uni is the function that converts win1251 to unicode. here is the code of it

<?php 



  //  Windows 1251 -> Unicode

  function win2uni($s)

  {

    $s = convert_cyr_string($s,'w','i'); //  win1251 -> iso8859-5

    //  iso8859-5 -> unicode:

    for ($result='', $i=0; $i<strlen($s); $i++) {

      $charcode = ord($s[$i]);

      $result .= ($charcode>175)?"&#".(1040+($charcode-176)).";":$s[$i];

    }

    return $result;

  }

?>



That's all today! Thanks for your attention!

Alex

BuddyHacker
21-Jul-2005 05:55


A correction to Paul Reinheimer's note above regarding this PHP error:



Fatal error: Call to undefined function imagettftext().



Paul states that you need XPM libraries to resolve this issue.  This is not true.  There is an error message that originates from "configure" which mistakenly shows itself when other components are missing.  For instance, if you tell "configure" to add JPEG support, and it can't find the libraries, it will tell you it can't find the JPEG libraries AND it will recommend adding --with-xpm to solve the problem.  This recommendation is ill-placed and misleading.



I received the same error message above, along with the recommendation to add XPM supprt.  However I resolved it by adding the --with-freetype-dir  AND --enable-gd-native-ttf  options  to the "configure" command line.  I did _not_ need XPM.



There are other variations to this error message, such as the script recommending adding JPEG support or PNG support to resolve it's own inability to locate other libraries.  The script needs some cleanup in order to fix these poorly placed recommendations.



FYI, imagettftext() is a call to one of the truetype fonts functions.  It is NOT related in any way to the XPM libraries, so it is not required unless you explicitly want XPM functionality.

nick
01-Apr-2005 05:18


A trivial function to get right or centre aligned horizontal text:



function imagettftextalign($image, $size, $angle, $x, $y, $color, $font, $text, $alignment='L') {

    

    //check width of the text

    $bbox = imagettfbbox ($size, $angle, $font, $text);

    $textWidth = $bbox[2] - $bbox[0];

    switch ($alignment) {

        case "R":

            $x -= $textWidth; 

            break;

        case "C":

            $x -= $textWidth / 2;

            break;

    }

        

    //write text

    imagettftext ($image, $size, $angle, $x, $y, $color, $font, $text);



}

erik[at]phpcastle.com
04-Mar-2005 08:46


Remember!!!



When uploading a font to your website you have to set the transfer mode to binary. It took me some time to find out :P. Tried to download the font from my website and it was spoiled.



In your script, the path to your font, use realpath("arial.ttf") so there is no confusion about that.

pillepop2003 at nospam dot yahoo dot de
12-Jan-2005 09:14


Hey guys,



check this function if you want to rotate the text around its center and not its "lower left" pivot-point:



<?php

        // Put center-rotated ttf-text into image

        // Same signature as imagettftext();

        function imagettftext_cr(&$im, $size, $angle, $x, $y, $color, $fontfile, $text)

        {

            // retrieve boundingbox

            $bbox = imagettfbbox($size, $angle, $fontfile, $text);

            

            // calculate deviation

            $dx = ($bbox[2]-$bbox[0])/2.0 - ($bbox[2]-$bbox[4])/2.0;         // deviation left-right

            $dy = ($bbox[3]-$bbox[1])/2.0 + ($bbox[7]-$bbox[1])/2.0;        // deviation top-bottom

            

            // new pivotpoint

            $px = $x-$dx;

            $py = $y-$dy;

            

            return imagettftext($im, $size, $angle, $px, $py, $color, $fontfile, $text);

        }



?>



Big up

Phil

Paul Reinheimer
20-Sep-2004 06:33


If you compiled PHP yourself but get an error:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function imagettftext().



You need to compile PHP with more options.



--with-gd

--enable-gd-native-ttf

--with-png

--with-zlib-dir=/usr/local/lib/zlib-1.2.1

--with-ttf

--with-jpeg-dir=/usr/local/lib/jpeg-6b/

--with-freetype-dir=/usr/local/lib/freetype-2.1.9/

--with-xpm-dir=/usr/X11R6/



The next set deal with setting up GD, and the appropriate options. Just enabling GD, ttf, png & jpeg is NOT enough. You also need Freetype and XPM.

plusplus7 at hotmail dot com
16-Jul-2004 04:37


If you are getting all rectangles instead of text, it may well mean that your ttf font is not opentype, particularly if it is an older freeware one. This requirement didn't exist in older versions so you may find that your font stops working after you upgrade. To fix this problem, try downloading the free MS Volt utility. From there, open your font file, and then click on Compile, and resave.

03-Dec-2002 03:13


If you have an older version of the GD library, but wish to use a font file which has spaces in the path, you should convert the path into DOS style names. This will only work on windows.





For example:


C:\reallylongpath\reallylongpath\font.ttf


Would become:


C:\really~1\really~1\font.ttf

imacs at email dot com
06-Apr-2000 05:16


To make it support chinese and japanese fonts, have a look here.


* http://www.freshmeat.net/appindex/1999/12/27/946305846.html

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