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PHP’s built-in ImageString function is OK, but I often find it lacking some of the basic features you’d expect. So I’ve created ImageStringRight, ImageStringCenter, ImageStringItalic, and a few other goodies for writing text to images in PHP.

Demo and source code after the break!

Live Demo: PHP ImageString Demo

ImageString Source Code

The source contains code and usage examples for the following enhanced PHP Image String functions:

• ImageStringRight: Creates a right-aligned string
• ImageStringCenter: Creates a string centered on the x-axis
• ImageStringUnderlined: Underlines ImageString!
• ImageStringItalic: Write a string in italics onto an image
• ImageStringShadow: Write a string with a dropshadow onto an image

They even work with fonts you load via ImageLoadFont, which is pretty awesome!

You can even nest effects, to create for instance, right-aligned italic strings with a drop shadow!

There’s an optional final parameter on each function, $ImageString, which contains a string representing the function to use to write the string. So for instance, if we want to write a right-aligned string in italics, we can use the following code:

ImageStringRight($image, 5, 25, 'Right + Italic', $col, 5, 'ImageStringItalic');

Where:

• $image is the result of an ImageCreate or ImageCreateTrueColor call
• 5 is the font to use
• 25 is the y-offset (i.e. how far down the image the string is to be written)
• $col is the color to write the text in
• 5 is an offset from the right (otherwise the string will be right up against the edge of the image)
• and finally we send “ImageStringItalic” as the ImageString function, so that ImageStringRight creates a right-aligned string using ImageStringItalic.

To nest more than two effects (eg right-aligned, italic and underlined), you’ll need to create a “helper” function, for instance like so:

function ImageStringItalicUnderlined($image, $font, $x, $y, $str, $col) {
        ImageStringItalic($image, $font, $x, $y, $str, $col, 2, 'ImageStringUnderlined');
}

Then you can use that helper function as the “$ImageString” parameter to ImageStringRight, like so:

ImageStringRight($image, 5, 10, 'Nested Effects', $red, 'ImageStringItalicUnderlined');

The PHP source code contains quite a few examples, but if you can’t get the effect you’re looking for just drop a comment here and I’ll help you out :D

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