PHP Manual: Write text to the image using TrueType fonts

Description

arrayfalse imagettftext(
    GdImage $image,
    float $size,
    float $angle,
    int $x,
    int $y,
    int $color,
    string $font_filename,
    string $text,
    array $options = []
)

Writes the given text into the image using TrueType fonts.

Note:
Prior to PHP 8.0.0, imagefttext was an extended variant of imagettftext which additionally supported the extrainfo. As of PHP 8.0.0, imagettftext is an alias of imagefttext.

Parameters

image

A GdImage object, returned by one of the image creation functions, such as imagecreatetruecolor.

size

The font size in points.

angle

The angle in degrees, with 0 degrees being left-to-right reading text. Higher values represent a counter-clockwise rotation. For example, a value of 90 would result in bottom-to-top reading text.

x

The coordinates given by x and y will define the basepoint of the first character (roughly the lower-left corner of the character). This is different from the imagestring, where x and y define the upper-left corner of the first character. For example, "top left" is 0, 0.

y

The y-ordinate. This sets the position of the fonts baseline, not the very bottom of the character.

color

The color index. Using the negative of a color index has the effect of turning off antialiasing. See imagecolorallocate.

fontfile

The path to the TrueType font you wish to use.

Depending on which version of the GD library PHP is using, when fontfile does not begin with a leading / then .ttf will be appended to the filename and the library will attempt to search for that filename along a library-defined font path.

When using versions of the GD library lower than 2.0.18, a space character, rather than a semicolon, was used as the 'path separator' for different font files. Unintentional use of this feature will result in the warning message: Warning: Could not find/open font. For these affected versions, the only solution is moving the font to a path which does not contain spaces.

In many cases where a font resides in the same directory as the script using it the following trick will alleviate any include problems.

<?php
// Set the environment variable for GD
putenv('GDFONTPATH=' . realpath('.'));

// Name the font to be used (note the lack of the .ttf extension)
$font = 'SomeFont';
?>

Note:
Note that open_basedir does not apply to fontfile.

text

The text string in UTF-8 encoding.

May include decimal numeric character references (of the form: €) to access characters in a font beyond position 127. The hexadecimal format (like ©) is supported. Strings in UTF-8 encoding can be passed directly.

Named entities, such as ©, are not supported. Consider using html_entity_decode to decode these named entities into UTF-8 strings.

If a character is used in the string which is not supported by the font, a hollow rectangle will replace the character.

Return Values

Returns an array with 8 elements representing four points making the bounding box of the text. The order of the points is lower left, lower right, upper right, upper left. The points are relative to the text regardless of the angle, so "upper left" means in the top left-hand corner when you see the text horizontally. Returns false on error.

Changelog

Version	Description
8.0.0	The `options` has been added.

Examples

Example #1 imagettftext example

This example script will produce a white PNG 400x30 pixels, with the words "Testing..." in black (with grey shadow), in the font Arial.

<?php
// Set the content-type
header('Content-Type: image/png');

// Create the image
$im = imagecreatetruecolor(400, 30);

// Create some colors
$white = imagecolorallocate($im, 255, 255, 255);
$grey = imagecolorallocate($im, 128, 128, 128);
$black = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 0, 0);
imagefilledrectangle($im, 0, 0, 399, 29, $white);

// The text to draw
$text = 'Testing...';
// Replace path by your own font path
$font = 'arial.ttf';

// Add some shadow to the text
imagettftext($im, 20, 0, 11, 21, $grey, $font, $text);

// Add the text
imagettftext($im, 20, 0, 10, 20, $black, $font, $text);

// Using imagepng() results in clearer text compared with imagejpeg()
imagepng($im);
imagedestroy($im);
?>

The above example will output something similar to:

Notes

Note: This function is only available if PHP is compiled with freetype support (--with-freetype-dir=DIR)

imagettftext