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TrueType Font PNG Image with PHP
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Posted on April 27th, 2011
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PHP Coding

This is a quick tutorial to show how simple and useful it can be tocreate dynamic images with alpha channel from a PHP file. The concept issimple. We create a php file that will tell the browser it is an imagefile, ( "image/png" in this case ) instead of the regular text/htmlcontent type. Then we use some of the built in GD library functions touse a local TruType font file, along we some text we specify, and applythe font data to a new blank image.

You can find more info and downloads at this link.

 

Step 1

Create a php file called "gd.php" and save it in a folder along with a ".ttf" font file of your choice, for example..

/fonts/gd.php
/fonts/yourfont.ttf

 

Step 2

Add and edit this code in the gd.php file..

// Turn off PHP errors, Disable caching and set the Content-Type.

error_reporting( E_NONE );
ini_set( 'display_errors', '0' );

header( "Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT" );
header( "Last-Modified: " . gmdate( "D, d M Y H:i:s" ) . " GMT" );
header( "Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate" );
header( "Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0", false );
header( "Pragma: no-cache" );
header( "Content-Type: image/png" );

// Setup some custom variables for creating our font and image.

$size= 48;// font size
$chars= 30;// prevent really long strings
$file= 'yourfont.ttf';// the text file to be used
$color= array( 192, 192, 190 ); // Color[ red, green, blue ]
$shade= array( 0, 0, 0, 1 );// Shadow [ red, green, blue, distance ]

// Get text string that is passed to this file and clean it up.

$text= ( !empty( $_GET['t'] ) ) ? trim( $_GET['t'] ) : 'PNG image';
$text= trim( strip_tags( html_entity_decode( $text ) ) );
$text= trim( preg_replace( '/ss+/', ' ', $text ) );
$text= ( strlen( $text ) > $chars ) ? substr( $text,0,$chars ).'..' : $text;

// Read the TTF file and get the width and height of our font.

$box= imagettfbbox( $size, 0, $file, $text );
$width= abs( $box[2] - $box[0] ) + 4;
$height= abs( $box[5] - $box[3] ) + 10;

// Create the blank image, alpha channel and colors.

$im= imagecreatetruecolor( $width, $height );
$alpha= imagesavealpha( $im, true );
$trans= imagecolorallocatealpha( $im, 0, 0, 0, 127 );
$fill= imagefill( $im, 0, 0, $trans );
$fg= imagecolorallocate( $im, $color[0], $color[1], $color[2] );
$bg= imagecolorallocate( $im, $shade[0], $shade[1], $shade[2] );

// Finally, we add the font and the shadow to our new image.

imagettftext( $im, $size, 0, $shade[3], ( $size + $shade[3] ), $bg, $file, $text );
imagettftext( $im, $size, 0, 0, $size, $fg, $file, $text );

// Output the image and do a little cleanup.

imagepng( $im );
imagedestroy( $im );

 

Step 3

use your new PHP script as a png image for creating things like header text or anything else you like. Your fonts will be displayed the same in all browsers because it's a PNG image. :)

<img src="/fonts/gd.php?t=String Here" alt="" />
<h1 style="background-image:url( '/fonts/gd.php?t=String Here' )"></h1>

 

Written by: Rainner Lins.

http://rainnerlins.com/work/php-ttf-font

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Rainner

My name is, as the logo says, Rainner Lins. I work mostly in the development of web sites and other web and media applications, anything from programming, design, security, debugging to full on hardware repair and replacement, but also have a huge passion
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