Index of /doc/libgd2-xpm

	Name	Last modified	Size	Description
	Parent Directory		-
	changelog.Debian.gz	2015-04-06 15:44	13K
	changelog.gz	2015-04-06 15:44	14K
	copyright	2015-04-06 15:44	5.6K
	readme.jpn	2015-04-06 15:44	1.7K
	NEWS.gz	2015-04-06 15:44	2.2K
	README.html	2015-04-06 15:45	245K
	README.gz	2015-04-06 15:45	54K
	buildinfo_amd64.gz	2015-04-06 15:45	3.0K

gd 2.0.36

A graphics library for fast image creation

Follow this link to the latest version of this document.

UPGRADING UNIX USERS: READ THIS FIRST! Modern versions of gd install by default to /usr/local/lib and /usr/local/include. If you already have an older version of gd in /usr/lib and /usr/include, you may wish to use:

./configure --prefix=/usr

To ensure that your new installation overwrites the old.

GIF support has been restored in gd 2.0.28 and above. The well-known patents on LZW compression held by Unisys have expired in all countries. British Telecom and IBM may hold related patents but have never chosen to require royalties for GIF applications, to the best of my knowledge. I am not a lawyer and cannot give legal advice regarding this issue. PNG remains a superior format especially if lossless truecolor images are needed.

When building from soruce, gd 2.0.36 requires that the following libraries also be installed, in order to produce the related image formats. The win32 binary release (bgd) already contains the appropriate libraries. You may skip libraries associated with formats you do not use:

libpng (see the libpng home page), if you want PNG

zlib (see the info-zip home page), if you want PNG

jpeg-6b or later, if desired (see the Independent JPEG Group home page), if you want JPEG

If you want to use the TrueType font support, you must also install the FreeType 2.x library, including the header files. See the Freetype Home Page, or SourceForge. No, I cannot explain why that site is down on a particular day, and no, I can't send you a copy.

If you want to use the Xpm color bitmap loading support, you must also have the X Window System and the Xpm library installed (Xpm is often included in modern X distributions). Most of the time you won't need Xpm.

Please read the documentation and install the required libraries. Do not send email asking why png.h is not found. Do not send email asking why libgd.so is not found, either. See the requirements section for more information. Thank you!

Table of Contents

• Credits and license terms
• What's new in version "XYZ" of GD?
• What is gd?
• What if I want to use another programming language?
• What else do I need to use gd?
• How do I get gd?
• How do I build gd?
• gd basics: using gd in your program
• webpng: a useful example
• Function and type reference by category
• About the additional .gd image file format
• Please tell us you're using gd!
• How do I get support?
• How do I report issues, bugs or features request?
• Alphabetical quick index

Up to the LibGD Homepage

Credits and license terms

In order to resolve any possible confusion regarding the authorship of gd, the following copyright statement covers all of the authors who have required such a statement. If you are aware of any oversights in this copyright notice, please contact Pierre-A. Joye who will be pleased to correct them.

COPYRIGHT STATEMENT FOLLOWS THIS LINE

Portions copyright 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Funded under Grant P41-RR02188 by the National Institutes of Health.

Portions copyright 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 by Boutell.Com, Inc.

Portions relating to GD2 format copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Philip Warner.

Portions relating to PNG copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Greg Roelofs.

Portions relating to gdttf.c copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 John Ellson (ellson@graphviz.org).

Portions relating to gdft.c copyright 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 John Ellson (ellson@graphviz.org).

Portions copyright 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Pierre-Alain Joye (pierre@libgd.org).

Portions relating to JPEG and to color quantization copyright 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, Doug Becker and copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Thomas G. Lane. This software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group. See the file README-JPEG.TXT for more information.

Portions relating to GIF compression copyright 1989 by Jef Poskanzer and David Rowley, with modifications for thread safety by Thomas Boutell.

Portions relating to GIF decompression copyright 1990, 1991, 1993 by David Koblas, with modifications for thread safety by Thomas Boutell.

Portions relating to WBMP copyright 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Maurice Szmurlo and Johan Van den Brande.

Portions relating to GIF animations copyright 2004 Jaakko Hyvätti (jaakko.hyvatti@iki.fi)

Permission has been granted to copy, distribute and modify gd in any context without fee, including a commercial application, provided that this notice is present in user-accessible supporting documentation.

This does not affect your ownership of the derived work itself, and the intent is to assure proper credit for the authors of gd, not to interfere with your productive use of gd. If you have questions, ask. "Derived works" includes all programs that utilize the library. Credit must be given in user-accessible documentation.

This software is provided "AS IS." The copyright holders disclaim all warranties, either express or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, with respect to this code and accompanying documentation.

Although their code does not appear in the current release, the authors also wish to thank Hutchison Avenue Software Corporation for their prior contributions.

END OF COPYRIGHT STATEMENT

What is gd?

gd is a graphics library. It allows your code to quickly draw images complete with lines, arcs, text, multiple colors, cut and paste from other images, and flood fills, and write out the result as a PNG or JPEG file. This is particularly useful in World Wide Web applications, where PNG and JPEG are two of the formats accepted for inline images by most browsers.

gd is not a paint program. If you are looking for a paint program, you are looking in the wrong place. If you are not a programmer, you are looking in the wrong place, unless you are installing a required library in order to run an application.

gd does not provide for every possible desirable graphics operation. It is not necessary or desirable for gd to become a kitchen-sink graphics package, but version 2.0 does include most frequently requested features, including both truecolor and palette images, resampling (smooth resizing of truecolor images) and so forth.

What if I want to use another programming language?

PHP

Perl

OCaml

Tcl

Pascal

REXX

Any Language

• fly, by Martin Gleeson

Please see the NEWS file, the releases announcements and the ChangeLog for the changes in the releases after 2.0.34.

What's new in version 2.0.34?

From 2.0.34 and later, please check the ISSUES and ChangeLog as well as the releases announcements.

What's new in version 2.0.33?

Version 2.0.33 restores compatibility with older releases of Freetype 2.x in addition to the latest release. Thanks to John Ellson and the graphviz project.

What's new in version 2.0.32?

Version 2.0.32 restores correct detection of Unicode character sets for freetype fonts, which repairs a bug that prevented umlauts from displaying properly. Thanks to John Ellson and the graphviz project. Also, version 2.0.32 builds all test programs smoothly in the absence of libpng.

What's new in version 2.0.31?

A minor type naming conflict prevented bgd.dll from compiling, and it was left out of the distribution as a result. This has been corrected.

What's new in version 2.0.30?

2.0.29 did not compile correctly when freetype was not available. This has been corrected. Thanks to Alessandro Ranellucci.

What's new in version 2.0.29?

• A 32-bit multiplication overflow vulnerability reported on the Bugtraq mailing list has been corrected, along with a number of similar issues. These bugs come into play only when attempting to deal with images with extremely large dimensions. The relevant functions now fail gracefully when such extreme parameters are specified. The code in question is also correct for systems with larger bit depths. Thanks to Phil Knirsch, Alan Cox and infamous41md. Since exploits are theoretically possible, upgrading is recommended.
• Support for the fontconfig library, when available. When fontconfig is available and gdFTUseFontConfig(1) has been invoked or the gdFTEX_FONTCONFIG flag has been set for a particular call, fontconfig patterns can be used to fetch the best available font. For instance, "arial:bold:italic" does the right thing (or as close as the available fonts permit). Also, standard PostScript font names can be mapped to an appropriate font by gdImageStringFTEx and relatives. When fontconfig is available gdlib-config --features will list the GD_FONTCONFIG feature. For more information about fontconfig, see the fontconfig pages.

  The actual resolved font filename can be returned in the gdFTStringExtra structure as the fontpath element if the gdFTEX_RETURNFONTPATHNAME flag is set. Also, a vector of character position advances can be retrieved if gdFTEX_XSHOW is set in the flags element. .afm files (font metrics) are now used to adjust size calculations when available. When fontconfig is not available, gd falls back to its usual behavior and requires a specific font file name. One can still fetch fonts by filename when gdFTUseFontConfig(1) is in effect, by setting the gdFTEX_FONTPATHNAME flag in the flag element of the gdFTStringExtra structure. Thanks to Dag Lem and John Ellson.

• Additional freetype fixes: fixed width fonts are now the right size, horizontal advance calculations now better match the PostScript equivalent, and various compiler warning fixes. Also, a fix to the encoding table selection in the was made, addressing a problem with latin1 font encodings. Thanks to Dag Lem and John Ellson.
• Improved tolerance when reading JPEG files containing some garbage as well as valid image data.
• Easier compilation on Windows: no errno.h in gd_gd2.c.
• Support for creating optimized GIF animations has been added by Jaakko Hyvätti. See gdImageGifAnimAdd, gdImageGifAnimAddCtx, gdImageGifAnimAddPtr, gdImageGifAnimBegin, gdImageGifAnimBeginCtx, gdImageGifAnimBeginPtr, gdImageGifAnimEnd, gdImageGifAnimEndCtx, and gdImageGifAnimEndPtr.
• gdImageOpenPolygon has been added to allow consecutive line segments to be drawn without connecting the end points to form a closed polygon. Thanks to Jaakko Hyvätti.
• Better alpha channel blending when the destination color contains an alpha channel. Also, quicker handling of the most common cases. Thanks to Frank Warmerdam.

What's new in version 2.0.28?

• GIF support has been restored. See gdImageGif, gdImageGifCtx, gdImageGifPtr, gdImageCreateFromGif, gdImageCreateFromGifCtx, and gdImageCreateFromGifPtr. These functions are now thread-safe, similar to the PNG and JPEG manipulation functions.
• The new gdImageCreatePaletteFromTrueColor function is identical to gdImageTrueColorToPalette, except that it returns a new image rather than permanently modifying the original.

What's new in version 2.0.27?

• In gd 2.0.26, there was potential for out of bounds fills, and therefore crashes, in the horizontalLine function used by gdImageFilledPolygon. Fixed by John Ellson.
• The order of the points returned in the bounding rectangle by gdImageStringFT was incorrect in version 2.0.26. This has been corrected in version 2.0.27. Thanks to Riccardo Cohen for pointing this out, and to John Ellson for verifying and fixing it.

What's new in version 2.0.26?

The following enhancements and fixes:

• Drastically faster, less memory-intensive antialiased drawing, thanks to Pierre-Alain Joye. This code was imported from the PHP "fork" of gd. The API for antialiased drawing has not changed, however the implementation has been completely replaced. Antialiased line drawing does not support widths other than 1, however this did not work properly with the other implementation of antialiasing either. Support has been included for the "non-blending color" option introduced by the previous implementation of antialiased drawing.
• gdlib-config, which has been installed by make install for some time now, has gained a --features option. This option produces a space-separated list of optional features with which the gd library was compiled. Typical usage looks like this:

  % gdlib-config --features
  GD_XPM GD_JPEG GD_FREETYPE GD_PNG GD_GIF
  

  Other configure scripts can conveniently define preprocessor symbols based on this list in order to conditionally compile code. For instance, if GD_PNG is not reported by --features, then gdImagePng is not included in the library.

  Thanks to Lars Hecking and Lincoln Stein for their advice on implementing this feature. Any blame for the actual implementation is entirely due to me (TBB).

• Fixes to the behavior of the bounding rectangle returned by gdImageStringFT and relatives when the string is rotated. See fontwheeltest.c. Thanks to John Ellson.
• Previously, gdImageStringFT and friends accepted either a full path to a font file, or the name of a font with no extension, in which case the GDFONTPATH environment variable and then the compiled-in DEFAULT_FONTPATH was searched. In addition, a font filename with an extension but no full path can now be automatically searched for in the same fashion. Thanks to John Ellson.
• Fixes to freetype antialiased text against a transparent background. See testtr.c. Thanks to John Ellson.
• Support for named entities like & and hex-coded entities such as 水 in text strings passed to gdImageStringFT and relatives, adding to the previous support for decimal-coded entities like Å. These were extracted from entities.html (from the W3C) via the script entities.tcl, which is included for the curious and those with other entities they need support for. Thanks to John Ellson.
• Optimization: gdImageSetPixel no longer calls gdImageAlphaBlend when either the source or the destination pixel is 100% transparent. Thanks to John Ellson.
• Optimization: gdImageLine is potentially faster now in the most common cases. Thanks to John Ellson.
• Documentation of the entities feature of gdImageStringFT.
• autoconf/configure fixes. Thanks to many who pointed out an oversight in handling libpng flags.

What's new in version 2.0.25?

Owing to an oversight while making changes to better accommodate the use of gd as a DLL, the extern qualifier was dropped from the declarations of font pointers in 2.0.24. This has been corrected. Thanks to Richard ("OpenMacNews").

What's new in version 2.0.24?

Windows DLL now uses __stdcall calling convention. Existing applications will require a recompile, using the new version of gd.h, in order to use this version of the DLL. However, Visual BASIC and other non-C programmers will now be able to use the DLL, which is an enormous benefit and justifies the one-time inconvenience to existing DLL users.

The elaborate #ifdef test for older versions of Freetype without FT_ENCODING_MS_SYMBOL was needed in a second place also. Thanks to David R. Morrison.

An off-by-one error in gdImageToPalette caused transparency to be applied to the wrong pixels. Thanks to "Super Pikeman."

What's new in version 2.0.23?

Output dpi specification option added to the gdFTStringExtra structure, thanks to Mark Shackelford. See gdImageStringFTEx.

What's new in version 2.0.22?

• Win32 DLL users: working with pointers exported by DLLs is difficult and causes unexpected results. gd 2.0.22 exports new functions for retrieving the basic gd fonts: gdFontGetTiny(), gdFontGetSmall(), gdFontGetMediumBold(), gdFontGetLarge(), and gdFontGetHuge(). You may safely assign the return values from these functions to a local gdFontPtr. Direct use of gdFontLarge, etc. is strongly deprecated for users of bgd.dll; use these new functions instead.
• Basic support for loading CMYK-colorspace JPEG images. They are of course converted to RGB which is a lossy process, however the results do look quite good and are certainly fine for thumbnails and web previews of DTP work.
• "make" no longer fails on circletexttest if PNG support is missing.
• Small performance improvements to gdImageCopyResampled; larger improvements are forthcoming.

What's new in version 2.0.21?

• Version 2.0.21 adds a gdImageCreateFrom*Ptr family of functions which make it convenient to load an image in any GD-supported format directly from memory.
• The new gdNewDynamicCtxEx function was added to support the easy implementation of the above functions and to correct a design problem which made life unpleasant for those passing in memory not originally allocated by gd to the gdNewDynamicCtx function by provoding a way to specify that gd should never free or reallocate a particular block of memory. The gdNewDynamicCtx function and its relatives, although still exported for ABI compatibility, are now deprecated except for internal use, in favor of gdImageCreateFromPngPtr and its relatives.
• Version 2.0.21 includes a new patch from Ethan A. Merritt to correct a bug in the conditional compilation of support for symbol fonts in gdft.c. Symbol fonts should now work correctly. Thanks to Mr. Merritt.
• Version 2.0.20 restores the gdFreeFontCache function, an undocumented function added in an earlier release which now simply calls gdFontCacheShutdown for backwards compatibility. This repairs build problems when compiling PHP against the latest gd.
• Documentation improvements.

What's new in version 2.0.20?

• Version 2.0.20 restores the gdFreeFontCache function, an undocumented function added in an earlier release which now simply calls gdFontCacheShutdown for backwards compatibility. This repairs build problems when compiling PHP against the latest gd.

What's new in version 2.0.19?

• Version 2.0.19 restored extern declarations for the gd font pointers inadvertently removed in 2.0.18.

What's new in version 2.0.18?

• A Win32 binary distribution of "bgd.dll," built with mingw32 and tested with win32 versions of the demo programs as console applications, is now available.
• Semicolon rather than space used as the default separator of alternative font file paths in gdImageStringFT, for better compatibility with Windows and other environments where spaces are common in paths.
• The circletexttest demo no longer fails to compile when JPEG support happens to be absent.

What's new in version 2.0.17?

Minor compilation and packaging problems with 2.0.16 were corrected. If 2.0.16 compiled without errors for you, then you don't need to upgrade to 2.0.17.

What's new in version 2.0.16?

• Thread safety for freetype text output. Background: all gd functions were already thread safe, as long as only one thread manipulates each image -- except for gdImageStringFT and gdImageStringFTEx. This is because of a shared freetype font cache. Sharing the cache between images is worthwhile, so "configure" now detects pthreads and uses it to wrap freetype text output in a critical section if available. There is also critical section support under WIN32. Those who wish to be strictly thread-safe should call the new function gdFontCacheSetup before allowing any thread to use freetype text calls. Otherwise this function is automatically invoked on the first use of freetype, with a very small but real chance of a race condition.
• gdImageSquareToCircle performs a "polar coordinate transform," returning a new image in which the X axis of the original has been remapped to theta (angle) and the Y axis of the original has been remapped to rho (distance from center).
• gdImageStringFTCircle wraps text in a circle around a specified center point. This function takes advantage of gdImageSquareToCircle. The result is very smooth, although it takes some time to compute. Thanks to Steve Bassi for sponsoring this work.
• gdImageSharpen, contributed by Paul Troughton. Thank you.
• Christophe Thomas corrected gdft.c to include freetype header files in the way that is now mandatory in freetype 2.1.6 and above.
• Gustavo Scotti fixed a memory leak in gdft.c.
• Clipping rectangle respected in freetype text output. Thanks to Matt McNabb.
• Paul den Dulk found a degenerate case that crashes gdImageToPalette. Fixed.
• Optimization by Ilia Chipitsine to avoid wasting time with offscreen scanlines during polygon rasterization.
• Optimized PNG saving by Phong Tran. Speeds up saves a little bit.
• Bug in gdImageCopyResized fixed by Mao Morimoto.

What's new in version 2.0.15?

• gd.c in 2.0.14 contained an instance of declaring variables after the first line of executable code appears. This is of course not allowed by ANSI C, although many compilers accept it. My apologies. Thanks to Jeff Vendetti for reporting this quickly.

What's new in version 2.0.14?

• 2.0.13 was available for mere minutes due to a typo in the new bounds-checking code for antialiased line drawing. Fixed.
• Not all platforms -- notably msys/mingw -- have an ssize_t type. We now call an int an int in gd_jpeg.c, with good results. (Note: ssize_t is signed, unlike size_t, and it needs to be here.)

What's new in version 2.0.13?

• The main() function of one of the test programs was accidentally included in the gd shared library, causing problems on some platforms. This has been corrected. Thanks to many people who pointed this out.
• The antialiased drawing functions now have proper bounds checking. Thanks to Arne Jorgensen.
• A void function returned a value in gd_png.c, causing warnings and, on some platforms, compilation errors but no reported runtime problems. Thanks to Kevin Smith, among others.
• Autohinting was being forced ON for freetype text output. This is apparently meant only for testing freetype and does not look as good as the default behavior (FT_LOAD_DEFAULT). Thanks to Bob Ostermann.
• penf.x is properly reset when newlines are encountered in freetype text output. Thanks to Christopher J. Grayce.

What's new in version 2.0.12?

• Small but numerous code cleanups by Dr. Martin Zinser.
• gdImageSetClip and gdImageGetClip have been added. All drawing routines now stay within the specified clipping rectangle. Note that the gdImageBoundsSafe function now returns true only if the specified location is within the clipping rectangle. Of course, the default clipping area is the entire image. The behavior of existing gd applications does not change.
• Support for fast drawing of antialiased lines and polygons, by Bright Fulton and Frank Faubert. To learn more about this feature, read about the gdImageSetAntiAliased function, which is used to set the foreground color for antialiasing, as well as the gdAntiAliased constant, which is passed to line- and polygon-drawing functions in place of a color. This code does not currently support an alpha channel component in the specified foreground color, or in the existing background image, but does perform alpha blending against an opaque background. Also see the gdImageSetAntiAliasedDontBlend function, which allows the specification of a special background color that should never be blended with the foreground.
• Fixes to color mapping in gdImageCopyMergeGray. Thanks to Philip Warner.
• gdImageStringFTEx now supports explicit specification of the desired character mapping. This is useful when a font offers more than one of Unicode, Shift_JIS, and Big5.
• The PNG compression level can now be specified when writing PNG images. See the new gdImagePngEx, gdImagePngEx, gdImagePngCtxEx, and gdImagePngPtrEx functions.
• The annotate utility builds without error in the absence of freetype, although of course it is not useful without freetype.
• Thorben Kundinger fixed a bug relating to the use of palette-based images as brushes when drawing on truecolor images.
• Michael Schwartz corrected a problem with his code for drawing thick lines.
• Prior to 2.0.12, any alpha channel component in the destination image was ignored when drawing with alpha blending in effect (see gdImageAlphaBlending). 2.0.12 correctly preserves an appropriate proportion of the alpha component of the destination, just as it preserves an appropriate proportion of the red, green and blue components, depending on the opacity of the foreground. Thanks to Frank Warmerdam for pointing out the issue.
• Memory leaks on failed attempts to load fonts in gdImageStringFTEx were corrected. Thanks to Frank Faubert.
• The impact of kerning is now correctly included in the calculation of the bounding box returned by the freetype text routines. This issue was pointed out by several individuals.
• Color problems with the gd2 file format routines were fixed by Steven Brown. These problems were due to the incorrect use of a signed integer.
• Version 2.0.12 supports the gd file format correctly for truecolor images. Truecolor gd files created with earlier releases in the 2.0 series must be written again. The gd file format is used to quickly load an entire uncompressed image, typically an existing background to which additional material will be added; it is not a general purpose file format. More advanced capabilities are also available via the gd2 format. Thanks to Andreas Pfaller for reporting the problem.
• Signed vs. unsigned problem caused misbehavior when attempting to load a bad JPEG image. Thanks to Geert Jansen.
• Existing truecolor PNG images with simple single-color transparency are now loaded properly, thanks to Slaven Rezic.
• The gdImageTrueColorToPalette function no longer attempts to preserve an alpha channel in the original. My attempt to do so resulted in significantly inferior output even if no alpha channel was present in the original. Thanks to Barend Gehrels for submitting a new adaptation of Tom Lane's jquant2.c which does a very high-quality job of palette conversion. Thanks also to Steven Brown, who submitted patches allowing a single 100% transparent color in the original truecolor image to be preserved. In practice, more complex alpha channels in palettes are ill-supported and difficult to allocate skillfully.

What's new in version 2.0.11?

• Support for the "gd2" file format, which allows fast loading of all or only part of an existing image, has been properly debugged for use with truecolor images. (Palette images already worked properly, except for a bug when loading from a regular file with gdImageCreateFromGd2Part, which has also been fixed.) .gd2 files can be either compressed or uncompressed, and they allow useful tricks such as fast loading of a 500x500 pixel region of a 6000x3000 pixel image, without uncompressing all of the image. .gd2 is NOT a general purpose file format and should only be used where quick loading of a background image or subset of a larger image is required. For more information, see gdImageGd2, gdImageCreateFromGd2, and gdImageCreateFromGd2Part.
• The gd2topng utility has been extended to support extraction of only part of an image from a .gd2 file. This is both a demonstration and a practical tool.
• Additional configure improvements by Lars Hecking.

What's new in version 2.0.10?

• gdImageLine now clips to the edges of the image before drawing lines, which greatly improves performance when many lines extend outside or are entirely outside the actual image. Thanks to Nick Atty for this code.
• gdImageBoundsSafe is replaced with a macro when called internally; this improves the performance of gdImageSetPixel and gdImageGetPixel a little bit, and therefore everything else as well. Thanks to Nicky Atty for the idea.
• Transparent indexes are handled properly with non-truecolor source images in gdImageCopy. Thanks to Frank Warmerdam.
• floor() replaced with a cast to long in gdImageCopyResampled, for a roughly 35% performance boost. Thanks to John Buckman.
• gdft.c builds correctly on WIN32 without patches.
• Much faster gdImageCreateFromJpeg routines, thanks to Christian Aberger for more efficient pointer arithmetic.
• gdtestft correctly builds without PNG tests if PNG support is not present. Thanks to Gabriele Verzeletti.

What's new in version 2.0.9?

• Version 2.0.9 contains a fix to gdImageCopyResized which allows correct results when copying a palette-based image with a single transparent index into a truecolor image. Thanks to Thorben Kundinger.
• More configure fixes from Lars Hecking. Thanks, Lars.

What's new in version 2.0.8?

• Version 2.0.8 contains additional fixes to the 'configure' script, allowing a clean out-of-the-box build on more systems.
• Version 2.0.8 adds the new gdImageCopyRotated function, which can rotate any rectangular image region by an arbitrary number of degrees.

What's new in version 2.0.7?

Version 2.0.7 corrects a problem which caused 'configure' to complain that the directory NONE was not found, in various places, causing the configuration process to stop. There are no code changes.

What's new in version 2.0.6?

• Fixed a compilation problem with gdft.c. A declaration appeared after executable code, and gcc let it slide by, so it made it out the door. My apologies!
• As penance, I have seen to it that the entire library now compiles cleanly with the -Wall, -ansi and -pedantic options enabled.

What's new in version 2.0.5?

• libgd 2.0.5 INSTALLS IN /usr/local/lib BY DEFAULT. IF YOU WANT IT TO INSTALL IN /usr/lib, YOU MUST SPECIFY THIS at configure time using this syntax:

  ./configure --prefix=/usr

• gd now uses GNU autoconf. This means that the provided configure script should be compatible with all standard GNU configure options and will figure out the correct settings for a much wider range of operating systems. Many, many thanks to Lars Hecking for taking care of this.
• The gdImageStringFTEx function is now included, thanks to Wez Furlong. My apologies to Wez for the unreasonable amount of time this patch has sat in my queue.
• Additional fixes from Wez Furlong.
• Arithmetic cleanup by Doug Claar.
• Corrections to loading and saving of alpha channel information in PNG files, by Andrew Hull.
• gdImageTrueColorToPalette does not contain unneeded test code.
• gdImageCopyResized works properly again when copying from a non-truecolor source.

What's new in version 2.0.4?

• Various test programs now compile in the absence of PNG support
• gdIOCtx correctly calls gdFree rather than free
• Various cleanups to pass -Wall without warnings
• Support for Adobe-style Type 1 fonts (.pfa and .pfb files) via freetype
• gdImageColorResolve and gdImageColorResolveAlpha will not attempt to resolve a color request to the transparent color index (for palette-based images)
• Improved font search path support
• Antialiased freetype text on palette images works properly when more than one image is created in a single program lifetime with different color indexes
• Better threshold for two-color "mono" images
• Memory leak fixes
• Text rotation fix
• More extensive default font path
• fontwheeltest and fontsizetest test programs for freetype

• configure now correctly detects and provides support for the Xpm library and its dependencies (Len Makin)

What's new in version 2.0.3?

• The configure script has been extensively modified to work properly in tests with both Solaris and Linux. Other platforms should also work based on feedback received and integrated to date.
• The --prefix option to configure works properly.
• The annotate utility has been added. This is a very handy tool for adding freetype text to existing JPEGs. After make install, type annotate -h for more information. Thanks to Joel Dubiner.

What's new in version 2.0.2?

• A "configure" script has been added. After wrestling with GNU autoconf for a while, I got tired of trying to make it detect libraries but accept their absence gracefully, and so on. Instead, I wrote a short Perl script which does the job and builds a reasonable Makefile. Those who find it doesn't detect their system's needs properly are welcome to contribute patches or the necessary commands.
• Antialiased freetype text output now works properly in both truecolor and non-truecolor contexts! Hurrah! On a truecolor image it is possible, for instance, to draw antialiased text on an arbitrarily complex background with 50% alpha blending (transparency), and get the expected pretty results. Thanks to Joel Dubiner for his support of this work.
• By default, alpha blending is now done within the library. Also, by default, alpha channel is not saved with PNG images. This means that programmers who try loading a JPEG, scribbling some pretty antialiased text on it, and saving the JPEG again will now get the results they expected. It also means that, by default, users will not run afoul of the fact that many web browsers don't properly support full PNG alpha channel.
• Various submitted bug fixes have been incorporated.
• Various other submitted changes have not been incorporated. Sorry. The interval between 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 was simply too long, and changes accumulated which were not mutually compatible. I'll do better in the future, especially with bug fixes.

What's new in version 2.0.1?

• Workaround for a bug in gcc, apparently found in gcc 2.7.2 and up. I reproduced and fixed it while using gcc 2.9.5.2. The bug occurred only when the -g option was in use. This problem caused gcc to spew internal error messages unrelated to the correctness of the code in gd_gd2.c. Howard Jones was first to report it.
• gdImageFilledEllipse documented and altered; no longer requires a superfluous style argument. Thanks to Francis James Franklin.
• The Makefile now offers the correct syntax for optionally creating a static library. Thanks to Jean-Lous Regez, among others.
• A nested comment, an attempt to return the value of a void function, and a potentially significant error in gdImageCopyResampled were fixed thanks to Joseph Shirley.
• A bug preventing proper truecolor text rendering was fixed, thanks to Jason Gallagher.
• gdImageStringFT (FreeType) should now work better against a transparent or semitransparent background, and should act in a manner consistent with the most recent gdImageAlphaBlending setting. Antialiasing is now done via the alpha channel mechanism if the image is a truecolor image.
• Bugs in the output of gdImageArc and gdImageFilledArc were reported by Bruce Verderaime. A simple and correct but inefficient implementation has been substituted until fixes are contributed for the faster code, which is in gd_arc_f_buggy.c along with the test program that reproduces the bug(s).
• gdImageFilledArc now offers additional style options, which can be combined to produce various effects.
• Masahito Yamaga (ma@yama-ga.com) sent a patch to improve support for Japanese output via gdImageStringFT. He also added a new readme.jpn file.
• Zillions of documentation fixes.

What's new in version 2.0?

• Support for truecolor images! Version 2.0 can load truecolor PNGs with no loss of color information, and almost no loss of alpha channel information. Version 2.0 can also load truecolor JPEGs with as little loss as possible; however, bear in mind that JPEG is a lossy format, so repeated load/save cycles always reduce image quality. This is not a bug. To create a truecolor image from scratch, call the new gdImageCreateTrueColor function. The gdImageCreate function is still available to create palette images, and may also be referred to as gdImageCreatePalette.
• Support for alpha channels! In addition to 24 bits of color information for each pixel (eight bits of red, green, and blue respectively), version 2.0 supports 7 bits of "alpha channel" information. This is used to determine exactly how transparent the pixel should be. There is also support for a full 7 bits of transparency for each individual palette index in a palette-based image. Please note that, as of this writing, only Macintosh Internet Explorer 5.x and Mozilla/Netscape 6.x display partial transparency properly.
• The new gdImageAlphaBlending function allows for two different modes of drawing. In blending mode, the alpha channel component of the color supplied to all drawing functions, such as gdImageSetPixel, determines how much of the underlying color should be allowed to shine through. The resulting image is not transparent. In non-blending mode, drawing color is copied literally with the alpha channel information, resulting in a transparent image. Blending mode is not available when drawing on palette images.
• The gdImageCopyResampled function provides "smooth" copying from a large image to a smaller one, using a weighted average of the pixels of the source area rather than selecting one representative pixel. This function is identical to gdImageCopyResized when the destination image is a palette image.
• The gdImageTrueColorToPalette function converts a truecolor image to a palette image. The code for this function was originally drawn from the Independent JPEG Group library code, which is excellent. The code has been modified to preserve as much alpha channel information as possible in the resulting palette, in addition to preserving colors as well as possible. This does not work as well as might be hoped. It is usually best to simply produce a truecolor output image instead, which guarantees the highest output quality.
• A very high degree of backwards compatibility with existing gd 1.x code has been maintained, at both the source code and binary level. Code which directly accesses the pixels array will fail only if it encounters an existing truecolor image, which may happen if the code attempts to open and modify an existing JPEG or truecolor PNG. Such code should be modified to check the trueColor flag of the gdImage structure, and refer to the tpixels array instead when it is set.
• gd is now compiled and installed as a shared library. However, gd still does not use autoconf, because I (TBB) have very limited patience with autoconf. These days, most Unix systems provide a fairly POSIX-standard environment, and the provided Makefile is likely to work well if users read it and follow the instructions at the top.
• Support for line thickness was added by Michael Schwartz. My apologies to him for sitting on his patches for so long. See the new gdImageSetThickness function, which affects all standard gd functions that draw lines and curves. In addition, Michael added a convenient gdImageEllipse function.
• The new gdImageFilledArc function provides a straightforward way to draw filled arcs. Also, gdImageFilledEllipse is a convenient way to fill an ellipse without specifying starting and ending angles. Thanks go out to F J Franklin.
• To put an end to the confusion, TrueType 1.x support has been removed in favor of TrueType 2.x support. The old gdImageStringTTF function simply invokes gdImageStringFT.
• The specialized .gd and .gd2 file formats have been upgraded to support truecolor. New images written by the versions of these functions found in 2.0 will be rejected, with varying degrees of grace, by older versions of gd. THIS AFFECTS THE .GD and .GD2 FORMATS ONLY. IF YOU ARE CONFUSED BY THIS PARAGRAPH, IT PROBABLY DOESN'T APPLY TO ANYTHING YOU WILL EVER ENCOUNTER. Since these file formats are absolutely, positively *not* designed for distributing images, just for preprocessing them, this should not be a big problem. gd 2.0 should read old .gd and .gd2 files correctly.

What's new in version 1.8.4?

• Add support for FreeType2 (John Ellson ellson@graphviz.org)
• Add support for finding in fonts in a builtin DEFAULT_FONTPATH, or in a path from the GDFONTPATH environment variable.
• remove some unused symbols to reduce compiler warnings
• bugfix in size comparisons in gdImageCompare
• REXX now mentioned
• All memory allocation functions are now wrapped within the library; gdFree is exported and recommended for freeing memory returned by the gdImage(Something)Ptr family of functions.

What's new in version 1.8.3?

• WBMP output memory leak fixed
• #include <gd.h> corrected to #include "gd.h" in gd_wbmp.c
• Documented the fact that the source and output images shouldn't match in the WBMP test except for black and white source images

What's new in version 1.8.2?

• WBMP support debugged and improved by Johann Van den Brande
• WBMP tests added to gdtest.c by Thomas Boutell
• Use of platform-dependent 'install' command removed by Thomas Boutell
• Comments added to Makefile warning users to juggle the order of the libraries if the linker complains; is there any portable way to do this automatically, short of using autoconf?
• Documentation of gdImageCreateFromXpm corrected
• Updated links to fast-moving, always dodging libpng and zlib web sites

What's new in version 1.8.1?

• Optional components no longer built by default (following the documentation)
• JPEG code no longer requires inappropriate header files
• Win32 patches from Joe Gregorio
• 16-bit font support for bdftogd, from Honza Pazdziora

What's new in version 1.8?

• Support for JPEG output, courtesy of Doug Becker
• A link to Michael Bradbery's Pascal wrapper
• Support for WBMP output, courtesy of Maurice Szmurlo
• gdImageColorClosestHWB function based on hue, whiteness, blackness, superior to the regular gdImageColorClosest function, courtesy of Philip Warner
• License clarification: yes, you can modify gd

Additional JPEG Information

What's new in version 1.7.3?

What's new in version 1.7.2?

Documentation fixes. Thanks to Dohn Arms.

Makefile fixes to permit linking with all libraries required on platforms with order- dependent linkers.

What's new in version 1.7.1?

What's new in version 1.7?

• Japanese language support for the TrueType functions. Thanks to Masahito Yamaga.
• autoconf and configure have been removed, in favor of a carefully designed Makefile which produces and properly installs the library and the binaries. System-dependent variables are at the top of the Makefile for easy modification. I'm sorry, folks, but autoconf generated many, many confused email messages from people who didn't have things where autoconf expected to find them. I am not an autoconf/automake wizard, and gd is a simple, very compact library which does not need to be a shared library. I did make many improvements over the old gd 1.3 Makefile, which were directly inspired by the autoconf version found in the 1.6 series (thanks to John Ellson).
• Completely ANSI C compliant, according to the -pedantic-errors flag of gcc. Several pieces of not-quite-ANSI-C code were causing problems for those with non-gcc compilers.
• gdttf.c patched to allow the use of Windows symbol fonts, when present (thanks to Joseph Peppin).
• extern "C" wrappers added to gd.h and the font header files for the convenience of C++ programmers. bdftogd was also modified to automatically insert these wrappers into future font header files. Thanks to John Lindal.
• Compiles correctly on platforms that don't define SEEK_SET. Thanks to Robert Bonomi.
• Loads Xpm images via the gdImageCreateFromXpm function, if the Xpm library is available. Thanks to Caolan McNamara.

What's new in version 1.6.3?

What's new in version 1.6.2?

• gdImageStringTTF - scalable, rotatable, anti-aliased, TrueType strings using the FreeType library, but only if libttf is found by configure. We do not provide TrueType fonts. Obtaining them is entirely up to you.
• gdImageColorResolve - an efficient alternative for the common code fragment:

  
        if ((color=gdImageColorExact(im,R,G,B)) < 0)
            if ((color=gdImageColorAllocate(im,R,G,B)) < 0)
                color=gdImageColorClosest(im,R,G,B);
  

Also in this release the build process has been converted to GNU autoconf/automake/libtool conventions so that both (or either) static and shared libraries can be built.

What's new in version 1.6.1?

Unlike gd 1.6, users should have no trouble linking with gd 1.6.1 if they follow the instructions and install all of the pieces. However, If you get undefined symbol errors, be sure to check for older versions of libpng in your library directories!

What's new in version 1.6?

Support for 8-bit palette PNG images has been added. Support for GIF has been removed. This step was taken to completely avoid the legal controversy regarding the LZW compression algorithm used in GIF. Unisys holds a patent which is relevant to LZW compression. PNG is a superior image format in any case. Now that PNG is supported by both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape (in their recent releases), we highly recommend that GD users upgrade in order to get well-compressed images in a format which is legally unemcumbered.

What's new in version 1.5?

New GD2 format

An improvement over the GD format, the GD2 format uses the zlib compression library to compress the image in chunks. This results in file sizes comparable to GIFs, with the ability to access parts of large images without having to read the entire image into memory.

This format also supports version numbers and rudimentary validity checks, so it should be more 'supportable' than the previous GD format.

Re-arranged source files

gd.c has been broken into constituant parts: io, gif, gd, gd2 and graphics functions are now in separate files.

Extended I/O capabilities.

The source/sink feature has been extended to support GD2 file formats (which require seek/tell functions; seek must return 1 for success, 0 for failure), and to allow more general non-file I/O.

Better support for Lincoln Stein's Perl Module

The new gdImage*Ptr function returns the chosen format stored in a block of memory. This can be directly used by the GD perl module.

Added functions

gdImageCreateFromGd2Part - allows retrieval of part of an image (good for huge images, like maps),
gdImagePaletteCopy - Copies a palette from one image to another, doing it's best to match the colors in the target image to the colors in the source palette.
gdImageGd2, gdImageCreateFromGd2 - Support for new format
gdImageCopyMerge - Merges two images (useful to highlight part of an image)
gdImageCopyMergeGray - Similar to gdImageCopyMerge, but tries to preserve source image hue.
gdImagePngPtr, gdImageJpegPtr, gdImageWBMPPtr, gdImageGdPtr, gdImageGd2Ptr - return memory blocks for each type of image.
gdImageCreateFromPngCtx, gdImageCreateFromGdCtx, gdImageCreateFromGd2Ctx, gdImageCreateFromGd2PartCtx - Support for new I/O context.

What's new in version 1.4?

Fixed polygon fill routine (again)

Thanks to Kirsten Schulz, version 1.4 is able to fill numerous types of polygons that caused problems with previous releases, including version 1.3.

Support for alternate data sources

Programmers who wish to load a GIF from something other than a stdio FILE * stream can use the new gdImageCreateFromPngSource function.

Support for alternate data destinations

Programmers who wish to write a GIF to something other than a stdio FILE * stream can use the new gdImagePngToSink function.

More tolerant when reading GIFs

Version 1.4 does not crash when reading certain animated GIFs, although it still only reads the first frame. Version 1.4 also has overflow testing code to prevent crashes when reading damaged GIFs.

What's new in version 1.3?

Non-LZW-based GIF compression code

Version 1.3 contained GIF compression code that uses simple Run Length Encoding instead of LZW compression, while still retaining compatibility with normal LZW-based GIF decoders (your browser will still like your GIFs). LZW compression is patented by Unisys. We are currently reevaluating the approach taken by gd 1.3. The current release of gd does not support this approach. We recommend that you use the current release, and generate PNG images. Thanks to Hutchison Avenue Software Corporation for contributing the RLE GIF code.

8-bit fonts, and 8-bit font support

This improves support for European languages. Thanks are due to Honza Pazdziora <adelton@informatics.muni.cz> and also to Jan Pazdziora <adelton@fi.muni.cz>. Also see the provided bdftogd Perl script if you wish to convert fixed-width X11 fonts to gd fonts.

16-bit font support (no fonts provided)

Although no such fonts are provided in the distribution, fonts containing more than 256 characters should work if the gdImageString16 and gdImageStringUp16 routines are used.

Improvements to the "webpng" example/utility

The "webpng" utility is now a slightly more useful application. Thanks to Brian Dowling for this code.

Corrections to the color resolution field of GIF output

Thanks to Bruno Aureli.

Fixed polygon fills

A one-line patch for the infamous polygon fill bug, courtesy of Jim Mason. I believe this fix is sufficient. However, if you find a situation where polygon fills still fail to behave properly, please send code that demonstrates the problem, and a fix if you have one. Verifying the fix is important.

Row-major, not column-major

Internally, gd now represents the array of pixels as an array of rows of pixels, rather than an array of columns of pixels. This improves the performance of compression and decompression routines slightly, because horizontally adjacent pixels are now next to each other in memory. This should not affect properly written gd applications, but applications that directly manipulate the pixels array will require changes.

What else do I need to use gd?

To use gd, you will need an ANSI C compiler. All popular Windows 95 and NT C compilers are ANSI C compliant. Any full-ANSI-standard C compiler should be adequate. The cc compiler released with SunOS 4.1.3 is not an ANSI C compiler. Most Unix users who do not already have gcc should get it. gcc is free, ANSI compliant and a de facto industry standard. Ask your ISP why it is missing.

As of version 1.6, you also need the zlib compression library, and the libpng library. As of version 1.6.2, you can draw text using antialiased TrueType fonts if you also have the libttf library installed, but this is not mandatory. zlib is available for a variety of platforms from the zlib web site. libpng is available for a variety of platforms from the PNG web site.

You will also want a PNG viewer, if you do not already have one for your system, since you will need a good way to check the results of your work. Netscape 4.04 and higher, and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher, both support PNG. Not every PNG-compatible viewer supports alpha channel transparency, which is why gd 2.0.2 and above do alpha blending in the library by default; it is possible to turn on the saving of alpha channel information to the file instead.

How do I get gd?

Binaries (DLL for Windows programmers):

• .ZIP File of DLL, Headers, Et Cetera

Source Code:

• Gzipped Tar File (Unix)
• .ZIP File of SOURCE CODE (Windows)

How do I build gd?

Win32 DLL users: if you are using MSVC, use the provided batch file makemsvcimport.bat to make a bgd.lib import library corresponding to the provided bgd.dll. Copy bgd.dll to your application directory, or to your Windows sytem directory. In the settings of your MSVC project, you MUST choose the "multithreaded DLL" library option under "code generation." mingw32 and cygwin users can simply link with the provided libbgd.a stub library in order to use the DLL.

In order to build gd, you must first unpack the archive you have downloaded. If you are not familiar with tar and gunzip (Unix) or ZIP (Windows), please consult with an experienced user of your system. Sorry, we cannot answer questions about basic Internet skills.

Unpacking the archive will produce a directory called "gd-2.0.33".

For Unix

./configure

NOTE: BY DEFAULT, THE LIBRARY IS INSTALLED IN /usr/local/lib and the include files are installed in /usr/local/include. IF YOU ARE UPGRADING, you may wish to use:

./configure --prefix=/usr

Rather than just ./configure, before typing make and make install.

If all goes well, this will create a Makefile. If all does not go well -- for instance, if neither the the JPEG nor the PNG and ZLIB libraries are found -- you will need to install those libraries, then come back and run configure again.

If necessary, make changes to the resulting Makefile. Then, type "make". If there are no errors, follow this with "make install". Because gd 2.0 and above installs as a shared library, it is necessary to install the library properly before running gd-based programs.

If you get errors, type ./configure --help for more information about the available options. In the unlikely event that the GNU autoconf-produced configure script does not work well for you, you may wish to try configure.pl, a simple Perl script with similar but less complete capabilities. If all else fails, try renaming makefile.sample to Makefile. However, ./configure is almost always your best bet.

For Windows

Use the DLL version! See the paragraph at the beginning of this sectino. If you really want to compile it yourself for some strange reason, read on.

Create a project using your favorite programming environment. Copy all of the gd files to the project directory. Add gd.c to your project. Add other source files as appropriate. Learning the basic skills of creating projects with your chosen C environment is up to you. Alternatively, use the free mingw32 or cygwin tools, which may prove to be compatible with the provided configure script.

If you wish to test the library, type "make test" AFTER you have successfully executed "make install". This will build several test programs, including "gddemo". (Not all of these programs are expected to print completely successful messages, depending on the nature of the image formats with which some of the tests are tried; for instance, WBMP is a black and white format, so loss of color information is expected there.) Run gddemo to see some of the capabilities of gd. Run gdtestft to play with the freetype support, if you have built gd with it and have access to truetype fonts.

gddemo should execute without incident, creating the file demoout.png. (Note there is also a file named demoin.png, which is provided in the package as part of the demonstration.)

Display demoout.png in your PNG viewer. The image should be 128x128 pixels and should contain an image of the space shuttle with quite a lot of graphical elements drawn on top of it.

(If you are missing the demoin.png file, the other items should appear anyway.)

Look at demoin.png to see the original space shuttle image which was scaled and copied into the output image.

gd basics: using gd in your program

-lgd -lpng -lz -ljpeg -lfreetype -lm

If you want to use the provided simple fonts, include gdfontt.h, gdfonts.h, gdfontmb.h, gdfontl.h and/or gdfontg.h. For more impressive results, install FreeType 2.x and use the gdImageStringFT function. If you are not using the provided Makefile and/or a library-based approach, be sure to include the source modules as well in your project. (They may be too large for 16-bit memory models, that is, 16-bit DOS and Windows.)

Here is a short example program. (For a more advanced example, see gddemo.c, included in the distribution. gddemo.c is NOT the same program; it demonstrates additional features!)

/* Bring in gd library functions */
#include "gd.h"

/* Bring in standard I/O so we can output the PNG to a file */
#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
  /* Declare the image */
  gdImagePtr im;
  /* Declare output files */
  FILE *pngout, *jpegout;
  /* Declare color indexes */
  int black;
  int white;

  /* Allocate the image: 64 pixels across by 64 pixels tall */
  im = gdImageCreate(64, 64);

  /* Allocate the color black (red, green and blue all minimum).
    Since this is the first color in a new image, it will
    be the background color. */
  black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  

  /* Allocate the color white (red, green and blue all maximum). */
  white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
  
  /* Draw a line from the upper left to the lower right,
    using white color index. */
  gdImageLine(im, 0, 0, 63, 63, white);  

  /* Open a file for writing. "wb" means "write binary", important
    under MSDOS, harmless under Unix. */
  pngout = fopen("test.png", "wb");

  /* Do the same for a JPEG-format file. */
  jpegout = fopen("test.jpg", "wb");

  /* Output the image to the disk file in PNG format. */
  gdImagePng(im, pngout);

  /* Output the same image in JPEG format, using the default
    JPEG quality setting. */
  gdImageJpeg(im, jpegout, -1);

  /* Close the files. */
  fclose(pngout);
  fclose(jpegout);

  /* Destroy the image in memory. */
  gdImageDestroy(im);
}

The above example program should give you an idea of how the package works. gd provides many additional functions, which are listed in the following reference chapters, complete with code snippets demonstrating each. There is also an alphabetical index.

Webpng: a more powerful gd example

webpng.c is provided in the distribution. Unix users can simply type "make webpng" to compile the program. Type "webpng" with no arguments to see the available options.

Function and type reference

• Types
• Image creation, destruction, loading and saving
• Drawing, styling, brushing, tiling and filling functions
• Query functions (not color-related)
• Font and text-handling functions
• Color handling functions
• Copying, resizing, rotating, deformation and filter functions
• Miscellaneous Functions
• Constants

Types

gdImage(TYPE)

The data structure in which gd stores images. gdImageCreate, gdImageCreateTrueColor and the various image file-loading functions return a pointer to this type, and the other functions expect to receive a pointer to this type as their first argument. It is reasonably safe to examine any of the members of this structure. It is also reasonably safe to modify individual pixels within the pixels or tpixels arrays. If the trueColor flag is set, the tpixels array is valid; otherwise the pixels array is valid.

The colorsTotal, red, green, blue, alpha and open arrays manage the palette. They are valid only when the trueColor flag is not set. The transparent value contains the palette index of the first transparent color as read-only information for backwards compatibility; gd 2.0 stores this information in the alpha array so that variable transparency can be supported for each palette entry. However, for truecolor images, transparent represents a single RGB color which is always 100% transparent, and this feature is generally supported by browsers which do not support full alpha channels.

typedef struct {
  /* Palette-based image pixels */
  unsigned char ** pixels;
  int sx;
  int sy;
  /* These are valid in palette images only. See also
  /* 'alpha', which appears later in the structure to
    preserve binary backwards compatibility */
  int colorsTotal;
  int red[gdMaxColors];
  int green[gdMaxColors];
  int blue[gdMaxColors]; 
  int open[gdMaxColors];
  /* For backwards compatibility, this is set to the
    first palette entry with 100% transparency,
    and is also set and reset by the 
    gdImageColorTransparent function. Newer
    applications can allocate palette entries
    with any desired level of transparency; however,
    bear in mind that many viewers, notably
    many web browsers, fail to implement
    full alpha channel for PNG and provide
    support for full opacity or transparency only. */
  int transparent;
  int *polyInts;
  int polyAllocated;
  struct gdImageStruct *brush;
  struct gdImageStruct *tile;  
  int brushColorMap[gdMaxColors];
  int tileColorMap[gdMaxColors];
  int styleLength;
  int stylePos;
  int *style;
  int interlace;
  /* New in 2.0: alpha channel for palettes. Note that only
    Macintosh Internet Explorer and (possibly) Netscape 6
    really support multiple levels of transparency in
    palettes, to my knowledge, as of 2/15/01. Most
    common browsers will display 100% opaque and
    100% transparent correctly, and do something 
    unpredictable and/or undesirable for levels
    in between. TBB */
  int alpha[gdMaxColors]; 
  /* Truecolor flag and pixels. New 2.0 fields appear here at the
    end to minimize breakage of existing object code. */
  int trueColor;
  int ** tpixels;
  /* Should alpha channel be copied, or applied, each time a
    pixel is drawn? This applies to truecolor images only.
    No attempt is made to alpha-blend in palette images,
    even if semitransparent palette entries exist. 
    To do that, build your image as a truecolor image,
    then quantize down to 8 bits. */
  int alphaBlendingFlag;
  /* Should the alpha channel of the image be saved? This affects
    PNG at the moment; other future formats may also
    have that capability. JPEG doesn't. */
  int saveAlphaFlag;
} gdImage;

The order of the structure members may appear confusing, but was chosen deliberately to increase backwards compatibility with existing gd 1.x-based binary code that references particular structure members.

gdImagePtr (TYPE)

A pointer to an image structure. gdImageCreate returns this type, and the other functions expect it as the first argument.

gdIOCtx (TYPE)

Most of the gd functions that read and write files, such as gdImagePng and , also have variants that accept a gdIOCtx structure; see gdImagePngCtx and gdImageCreateFromJpegCtx. Those who wish to provide their own custom routines to read and write images can populate a gdIOCtx structure with functions of their own devising to to read and write data. For image reading, the only mandatory functions are getC and getBuf, which must return the number of characters actually read, or a negative value on error or EOF. These functions must read the number of characters requested unless at the end of the file. For image writing, the only mandatory functions are putC and putBuf, which return the number of characters written; these functions must write the number of characters requested except in the event of an error. The seek and tell functions are only required in conjunction with the gd2 file format, which supports quick loading of partial images. The gd_free function will not be invoked when calling the standard Ctx functions; it is an implementation convenience when adding new data types to gd. For examples, see gd_png.c, gd_gd2.c, gd_jpeg.c, etc., all of which rely on gdIOCtx to implement the standard image read and write functions.

typedef struct gdIOCtx
{
  int (*getC) (struct gdIOCtx *);
  int (*getBuf) (struct gdIOCtx *, void *, int wanted);

  void (*putC) (struct gdIOCtx *, int);
  int (*putBuf) (struct gdIOCtx *, const void *, int wanted);

  /* seek must return 1 on SUCCESS, 0 on FAILURE. Unlike fseek! */
  int (*seek) (struct gdIOCtx *, const int);

  long (*tell) (struct gdIOCtx *);

  void (*gd_free) (struct gdIOCtx *);

} gdIOCtx;

gdFont (TYPE)

A font structure. Used to declare the characteristics of a font. Please see the files gdfontl.c and gdfontl.h for an example of the proper declaration of this structure. You can provide your own font data by providing such a structure and the associated pixel array. You can determine the width and height of a single character in a font by examining the w and h members of the structure. If you will not be creating your own fonts, you will not need to concern yourself with the rest of the components of this structure.

typedef struct {
  /* # of characters in font */
  int nchars;
  /* First character is numbered... (usually 32 = space) */
  int offset;
  /* Character width and height */
  int w;
  int h;
  /* Font data; array of characters, one row after another.
    Easily included in code, also easily loaded from
    data files. */
  char *data;
} gdFont;

gdFontPtr (TYPE)

A pointer to a font structure. Text-output functions expect these as their second argument, following the gdImagePtr argument. Two such pointers are declared in the provided include files gdfonts.h and gdfontl.h.

gdPoint (TYPE)

Represents a point in the coordinate space of the image; used by gdImagePolygon, gdImageOpenPolygon and gdImageFilledPolygon.

typedef struct {
        int x, y;
} gdPoint, *gdPointPtr;

gdPointPtr (TYPE)

A pointer to a gdPoint structure; passed as an argument to gdImagePolygon, gdImageOpenPolygon and gdImageFilledPolygon.

gdFTStringExtra (TYPE)

A structure used to pass additional parameters to the gdImageStringFTEx function. See gdImageStringFTEx for the structure definition.

gdFTStringExtraPtr (TYPE)

A pointer to a structure used to pass additional parameters to the gdImageStringFTEx function. See gdImageStringFTEx for the structure definition.

gdSource (TYPE)

typedef struct {
        int (*source) (void *context, char *buffer, int len);
        void *context;
} gdSource, *gdSourcePtr;

Represents a source from which a PNG can be read. Programmers who do not wish to read PNGs from a file can provide their own alternate input mechanism, using the gdImageCreateFromPngSource function. See the documentation of that function for an example of the proper use of this type.

gdSink (TYPE)

typedef struct {
        int (*sink) (void *context, char *buffer, int len);
        void *context;
} gdSink, *gdSinkPtr;

Represents a "sink" (destination) to which a PNG can be written. Programmers who do not wish to write PNGs to a file can provide their own alternate output mechanism, using the gdImagePngToSink function. See the documentation of that function for an example of the proper use of this type.

Image creation, destruction, loading and saving

gdImageCreate(sx, sy) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCreate is called to create palette-based images, with no more than 256 colors. Invoke gdImageCreate with the x and y dimensions of the desired image. gdImageCreate returns a gdImagePtr to the new image, or NULL if unable to allocate the image. The image must eventually be destroyed using gdImageDestroy().

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
im = gdImageCreate(64, 64);
/* ... Use the image ... */
gdImageDestroy(im);

gdImageCreateTrueColor(sx, sy) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCreateTrueColor is called to create truecolor images, with an essentially unlimited number of colors. Invoke gdImageCreateTrueColor with the x and y dimensions of the desired image. gdImageCreateTrueColor returns a gdImagePtr to the new image, or NULL if unable to allocate the image. The image must eventually be destroyed using gdImageDestroy().

Truecolor images are always filled with black at creation time. There is no concept of a "background" color index.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
im = gdImageCreateTrueColor(64, 64);
/* ... Use the image ... */
gdImageDestroy(im);

gdImageCreateFromJpeg(FILE *in) (FUNCTION)
gdImageCreateFromJpegPtr(int size, void *data) (FUNCTION)
gdImageCreateFromJpegCtx(gdIOCtx *in) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCreateFromJpeg is called to load truecolor images from JPEG format files. Invoke gdImageCreateFromJpeg with an already opened pointer to a file containing the desired image. gdImageCreateFromJpeg returns a gdImagePtr to the new truecolor image, or NULL if unable to load the image (most often because the file is corrupt or does not contain a JPEG image). gdImageCreateFromJpeg does not close the file. You can inspect the sx and sy members of the image to determine its size. The image must eventually be destroyed using gdImageDestroy(). The returned image is always a truecolor image.

If you already have the image file in memory, pass the size of the file and a pointer to the file's data to gdImageCreateFromJpegPtr, which is otherwise identical to gdImageCreateFromJpeg.

gdImagePtr im;
... inside a function ...
FILE *in;
in = fopen("myjpeg.jpg", "rb");
im = gdImageCreateFromJpeg(in);
fclose(in);
/* ... Use the image ... */
gdImageDestroy(im);

gdImageCreateFromPng(FILE *in) (FUNCTION)
gdImageCreateFromPngPtr(int size, void *data) (FUNCTION)
gdImageCreateFromPngCtx(gdIOCtx *in) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCreateFromPng is called to load images from PNG format files. Invoke gdImageCreateFromPng with an already opened pointer to a file containing the desired image. gdImageCreateFromPng returns a gdImagePtr to the new image, or NULL if unable to load the image (most often because the file is corrupt or does not contain a PNG image). gdImageCreateFromPng does not close the file. You can inspect the sx and sy members of the image to determine its size. The image must eventually be destroyed using gdImageDestroy().

If you already have the image file in memory, pass the size of the file and a pointer to the file's data to gdImageCreateFromPngPtr, which is otherwise identical to gdImageCreateFromPng.

If the PNG image being loaded is a truecolor image, the resulting gdImagePtr will refer to a truecolor image. If the PNG image being loaded is a palette or grayscale image, the resulting gdImagePtr will refer to a palette image. gd retains only 8 bits of resolution for each of the red, green and blue channels, and only 7 bits of resolution for the alpha channel. The former restriction affects only a handful of very rare 48-bit color and 16-bit grayscale PNG images. The second restriction affects all semitransparent PNG images, but the difference is essentially invisible to the eye. 7 bits of alpha channel resolution is, in practice, quite a lot.

gdImagePtr im;
... inside a function ...
FILE *in;
in = fopen("mypng.png", "rb");
im = gdImageCreateFromPng(in);
fclose(in);
/* ... Use the image ... */
gdImageDestroy(im);

gdImageCreateFromPngSource(gdSourcePtr in) (FUNCTION)

Deprecated in favor of gdImageCreateFromPngCtx. Should not be used in new applications.

gdImageCreateFromPngSource is called to load a PNG from a data source other than a file. Usage is very similar to the gdImageCreateFromPng function, except that the programmer provides a custom data source.

The programmer must write an input function which accepts a context pointer, a buffer, and a number of bytes to be read as arguments. This function must read the number of bytes requested, unless the end of the file has been reached, in which case the function should return zero, or an error has occurred, in which case the function should return -1. The programmer then creates a gdSource structure and sets the source pointer to the input function and the context pointer to any value which is useful to the programmer.

The example below implements gdImageCreateFromPng by creating a custom data source and invoking gdImageCreateFromPngSource.

static int freadWrapper(void *context, char *buf, int len);

gdImagePtr gdImageCreateFromPng(FILE *in)
{
        gdSource s;
        s.source = freadWrapper;
        s.context = in;
        return gdImageCreateFromPngSource(&s);
}

static int freadWrapper(void *context, char *buf, int len)
{
        int got = fread(buf, 1, len, (FILE *) context);
        return got;
}

gdImageCreateFromGif(FILE *in) (FUNCTION)
gdImageCreateFromGifPtr(int size, void *data) (FUNCTION)
gdImageCreateFromGifCtx(gdIOCtx *in) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCreateFromGif is called to load images from GIF format files. Invoke gdImageCreateFromGif with an already opened pointer to a file containing the desired image. gdImageCreateFromGif returns a gdImagePtr to the new image, or NULL if unable to load the image (most often because the file is corrupt or does not contain a GIF image). gdImageCreateFromGif does not close the file. You can inspect the sx and sy members of the image to determine its size. The image must eventually be destroyed using gdImageDestroy().

If you already have the image file in memory, pass the size of the file and a pointer to the file's data to gdImageCreateFromGifPtr, which is otherwise identical to gdImageCreateFromGif.

gdImagePtr im;
... inside a function ...
FILE *in;
in = fopen("mygif.gif", "rb");
im = gdImageCreateFromGif(in);
fclose(in);
/* ... Use the image ... */
gdImageDestroy(im);

gdImageCreateFromGd(FILE *in) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCreateFromGdPtr(int size, void *data) (FUNCTION)
gdImageCreateFromGdCtx(gdIOCtx *in) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCreateFromGd is called to load images from gd format files. Invoke gdImageCreateFromGd with an already opened pointer to a file containing the desired image in the gd file format, which is specific to gd and intended for very fast loading. (It is not intended for compression; for compression, use PNG or JPEG.)

If you already have the image file in memory, pass the size of the file and a pointer to the file's data to gdImageCreateFromGdPtr, which is otherwise identical to gdImageCreateFromGd.

gdImageCreateFromGd returns a gdImagePtr to the new image, or NULL if unable to load the image (most often because the file is corrupt or does not contain a gd format image). gdImageCreateFromGd does not close the file. You can inspect the sx and sy members of the image to determine its size. The image must eventually be destroyed using gdImageDestroy().

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
FILE *in;
in = fopen("mygd.gd", "rb");
im = gdImageCreateFromGd(in);
fclose(in);
/* ... Use the image ... */
gdImageDestroy(im);

gdImageCreateFromGd2(FILE *in) (FUNCTION)
gdImageCreateFromGd2Ptr(int size, void *data) (FUNCTION)
gdImageCreateFromGd2Ctx(gdIOCtx *in) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCreateFromGd2 is called to load images from gd2 format files. Invoke gdImageCreateFromGd2 with an already opened pointer to a file containing the desired image in the gd2 file format, which is specific to gd2 and intended for fast loading of parts of large images. (It is a compressed format, but generally not as good as maximum compression of the entire image would be.)

If you already have the image file in memory, pass the size of the file and a pointer to the file's data to gdImageCreateFromGd2Ptr, which is otherwise identical to gdImageCreateFromGd2.

gdImageCreateFromGd2 returns a gdImagePtr to the new image, or NULL if unable to load the image (most often because the file is corrupt or does not contain a gd format image). gdImageCreateFromGd2 does not close the file. You can inspect the sx and sy members of the image to determine its size. The image must eventually be destroyed using gdImageDestroy().

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
FILE *in;
in = fopen("mygd.gd2", "rb");
im = gdImageCreateFromGd2(in);
fclose(in);
/* ... Use the image ... */
gdImageDestroy(im);

gdImageCreateFromGd2Part(FILE *in, int srcX, int srcY, int w, int h) (FUNCTION)
gdImageCreateFromGd2PartPtr(int size, void *data, int srcX, int srcY, int w, int h) (FUNCTION)
gdImageCreateFromGd2PartCtx(gdIOCtx *in) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCreateFromGd2Part is called to load parts of images from gd2 format files. Invoked in the same way as gdImageCreateFromGd2, but with extra parameters indicating the source (x, y) and width/height of the desired image. gdImageCreateFromGd2Part returns a gdImagePtr to the new image, or NULL if unable to load the image. The image must eventually be destroyed using gdImageDestroy().

If you already have the image file in memory, you may use gdImageCreateFromGd2PartPtr. Pass the size of the image file, in bytes, as the first argument and the pointer to the image file data as the second argument.

gdImageCreateFromWBMP(FILE *in) (FUNCTION)
gdImageCreateFromWBMPPtr(int size, void *data) (FUNCTION)
gdImageCreateFromWBMPCtx(gdIOCtx *in) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCreateFromWBMP is called to load images from WBMP format files. Invoke gdImageCreateFromWBMP with an already opened pointer to a file containing the desired image. gdImageCreateFromWBMP returns a gdImagePtr to the new image, or NULL if unable to load the image (most often because the file is corrupt or does not contain a PNG image). gdImageCreateFromWBMP does not close the file. You can inspect the sx and sy members of the image to determine its size. The image must eventually be destroyed using gdImageDestroy().

If you already have the image file in memory, pass the size of the file and a pointer to the file's data to gdImageCreateFromWBMPPtr, which is otherwise identical to gdImageCreateFromWBMP.

gdImagePtr im;
... inside a function ...
FILE *in;
in = fopen("mywbmp.wbmp", "rb");
im = gdImageCreateFromWBMP(in);
fclose(in);
/* ... Use the image ... */
gdImageDestroy(im);

gdImageCreateFromXbm(FILE *in) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCreateFromXbm is called to load images from X bitmap format files. Invoke gdImageCreateFromXbm with an already opened pointer to a file containing the desired image. gdImageCreateFromXbm returns a gdImagePtr to the new image, or NULL if unable to load the image (most often because the file is corrupt or does not contain an X bitmap format image). gdImageCreateFromXbm does not close the file. You can inspect the sx and sy members of the image to determine its size. The image must eventually be destroyed using gdImageDestroy().

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
FILE *in;
in = fopen("myxbm.xbm", "rb");
im = gdImageCreateFromXbm(in);
fclose(in);
/* ... Use the image ... */
gdImageDestroy(im);

gdImageCreateFromXpm(char *filename) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCreateFromXbm is called to load images from XPM X Window System color bitmap format files. This function is available only if HAVE_XPM is selected in the Makefile and the Xpm library is linked with the application. Unlike most gd file functions, the Xpm functions require filenames, not file pointers. gdImageCreateFromXpm returns a gdImagePtr to the new image, or NULL if unable to load the image (most often because the file is corrupt or does not contain an XPM bitmap format image). You can inspect the sx and sy members of the image to determine its size. The image must eventually be destroyed using gdImageDestroy().

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
FILE *in;
in = fopen("myxpm.xpm", "rb");
im = gdImageCreateFromXpm(in);
fclose(in);
/* ... Use the image ... */
gdImageDestroy(im);

gdImageDestroy(gdImagePtr im) (FUNCTION)

gdImageDestroy is used to free the memory associated with an image. It is important to invoke gdImageDestroy before exiting your program or assigning a new image to a gdImagePtr variable.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
im = gdImageCreate(10, 10);
/* ... Use the image ... */
/* Now destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageJpeg(gdImagePtr im, FILE *out, int quality) (FUNCTION)
void gdImageJpegCtx(gdImagePtr im, gdIOCtx *out, int quality) (FUNCTION)

gdImageJpeg outputs the specified image to the specified file in JPEG format. The file must be open for writing. Under MSDOS and all versions of Windows, it is important to use "wb" as opposed to simply "w" as the mode when opening the file, and under Unix there is no penalty for doing so. gdImageJpeg does not close the file; your code must do so.

If quality is negative, the default IJG JPEG quality value (which should yield a good general quality / size tradeoff for most situations) is used. Otherwise, for practical purposes, quality should be a value in the range 0-95, higher quality values usually implying both higher quality and larger image sizes.

If you have set image interlacing using gdImageInterlace, this function will interpret that to mean you wish to output a progressive JPEG. Some programs (e.g., Web browsers) can display progressive JPEGs incrementally; this can be useful when browsing over a relatively slow communications link, for example. Progressive JPEGs can also be slightly smaller than sequential (non-progressive) JPEGs.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black, white;
FILE *out;
/* Create the image */
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Allocate background */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);
/* Allocate drawing color */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);
/* Draw rectangle */
gdImageRectangle(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, black);
/* Open output file in binary mode */
out = fopen("rect.jpg", "wb");
/* Write JPEG using default quality */
gdImageJpeg(im, out, -1);
/* Close file */
fclose(out);
/* Destroy image */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void* gdImageJpegPtr(gdImagePtr im, int *size, int quality) (FUNCTION)

Identical to gdImageJpeg except that it returns a pointer to a memory area with the JPEG data. This memory must be freed by the caller when it is no longer needed. The caller must invoke gdFree(), not free(), unless the caller is absolutely certain that the same implementations of malloc, free, etc. are used both at library build time and at application build time. The 'size' parameter receives the total size of the block of memory.

void gdImageGif(gdImagePtr im, FILE *out)
void gdImageGifCtx(gdImagePtr im, gdIOCtx *out) (FUNCTION)

gdImageGif outputs the specified image to the specified file in GIF format. The file must be open for writing. Under MSDOS and all versions of Windows, it is important to use "wb" as opposed to simply "w" as the mode when opening the file, and under Unix there is no penalty for doing so. gdImageGif does not close the file; your code must do so.

GIF does not support true color; GIF images can contain a maximum of 256 colors. If the image to be written is a truecolor image, such as those created with gdImageCreateTrueColor or loaded from a JPEG or a truecolor PNG image file, a palette-based temporary image will automatically be created internally using the gdImageCreatePaletteFromTrueColor function. The original image pixels are not modified. This conversion produces high quality palettes but does require some CPU time. If you are regularly converting truecolor to palette in this way, you should consider creating your image as a palette-based image in the first place.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black, white;
FILE *out;
/* Create the image */
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Allocate background */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);
/* Allocate drawing color */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);
/* Draw rectangle */
gdImageRectangle(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, black);
/* Open output file in binary mode */
out = fopen("rect.gif", "wb");
/* Write GIF */
gdImageGif(im, out);
/* Close file */
fclose(out);
/* Destroy image */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void* gdImageGifPtr(gdImagePtr im, int *size) (FUNCTION)

Identical to gdImageGif except that it returns a pointer to a memory area with the GIF data. This memory must be freed by the caller when it is no longer needed. The caller must invoke gdFree(), not free(), unless the caller is absolutely certain that the same implementations of malloc, free, etc. are used both at library build time and at application build time. The 'size' parameter receives the total size of the block of memory.

void gdImageGifAnimBegin(gdImagePtr im, FILE *out, int GlobalCM, int Loops)
void gdImageGifAnimBeginCtx(gdImagePtr im, gdIOCtx *out, int GlobalCM, int Loops) (FUNCTION)

This function must be called as the first function when creating a GIF animation. It writes the correct GIF file headers to selected file output, and prepares for frames to be added for the animation. The image argument is not used to produce an image frame to the file, it is only used to establish the GIF animation frame size, interlacing options and the color palette. gdImageGifAnimAdd is used to add the first and subsequent frames to the animation, and the animation must be terminated by writing a semicolon character (;) to it or by using gdImageGifAnimEnd to do that.

The GlobalCM flag indicates if a global color map (or palette) is used in the GIF89A header. A nonzero value specifies that a global color map should be used to reduce the size of the animation. Of course, if the color maps of individual frames differ greatly, a global color map may not be a good idea. GlobalCM=1 means write global color map, GlobalCM=0 means do not, and GlobalCM=-1 means to do the default, which currently is to use a global color map.

If Loops is 0 or greater, the Netscape 2.0 extension for animation loop count is written. 0 means infinite loop count. -1 means that the extension is not added which results in no looping. -1 is the default.

void* gdImageGifAnimBeginPtr(gdImagePtr im, int *size, int GlobalCM, int Loops) (FUNCTION)

Identical to gdImageGifAnimBegin except that it returns a pointer to a memory area with the GIF data. This memory must be freed by the caller when it is no longer needed. The caller must invoke gdFree(), not free(), unless the caller is absolutely certain that the same implementations of malloc, free, etc. are used both at library build time and at application build time. The 'size' parameter receives the total size of the block of memory.

void gdImageGifAnimAdd(gdImagePtr im, FILE *out, int LocalCM, int LeftOfs, int TopOfs, int Delay, int Disposal, gdImagePtr previm)
void gdImageGifAnimAddCtx(gdImagePtr im, gdIOCtx *out, int LocalCM, int LeftOfs, int TopOfs, int Delay, int Disposal, gdImagePtr previm) (FUNCTION)

This function writes GIF animation frames to GIF animation, which was initialized with gdImageGifAnimBegin. With LeftOfs and TopOfs you can place this frame in different offset than (0,0) inside the image screen as defined in gdImageGifAnimBegin. Delay between the previous frame and this frame is in 1/100s units. Disposal is usually gdDisposalNone, meaning that the pixels changed by this frame should remain on the display when the next frame begins to render, but can also be gdDisposalUnknown (not recommended), gdDisposalRestoreBackground (restores the first allocated color of the global palette), or gdDisposalRestorePrevious (restores the appearance of the affected area before the frame was rendered). Only gdDisposalNone is a sensible choice for the first frame. If previm is passed, the built-in GIF optimizer will always use gdDisposalNone regardless of the Disposal parameter.

Setting the LocalCM flag to 1 adds a local palette for this image to the animation. Otherwise the global palette is assumed and the user must make sure the palettes match. Use gdImagePaletteCopy to do that.

Automatic optimization is activated by giving the previous image as a parameter. This function then compares the images and only writes the changed pixels to the new frame in animation. The Disposal parameter for optimized animations must be set to 1, also for the first frame. LeftOfs and TopOfs parameters are ignored for optimized frames. To achieve good optimization, it is usually best to use a single global color map. To allow gdImageGifAnimAdd to compress unchanged pixels via the use of a transparent color, the image must include a transparent color.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im, im2, im3;
int black, white, trans;
FILE *out;
/* Create the image */
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Allocate background */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);
/* Allocate drawing color */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);
/* Allocate transparent color for animation compression */
trans = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 1, 1, 1);
/* Draw rectangle */
gdImageRectangle(im, 0, 0, 10, 10, black);
/* Open output file in binary mode */
out = fopen("anim.gif", "wb");
/* Write GIF header.  Use global color map.  Loop a few times */
gdImageGifAnimBegin(im, out, 1, 3);
/* Write the first frame.  No local color map.  Delay = 1s */
gdImageGifAnimAdd(im, out, 0, 0, 0, 100, 1, NULL);
/* construct the second frame */
im2 = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Allocate background to make it white */
(void)gdImageColorAllocate(im2, 255, 255, 255);
/* Make sure the palette is identical */
gdImagePaletteCopy (im2, im);
/* Draw something */
gdImageRectangle(im2, 0, 0, 15, 15, black);
/* Allow animation compression with transparent pixels */
gdImageColorTransparent (im2, trans);
/* Add the second frame */
gdImageGifAnimAdd(im2, out, 0, 0, 0, 100, 1, im);
/* construct the second frame */
im3 = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Allocate background to make it white */
(void)gdImageColorAllocate(im3, 255, 255, 255);
/* Make sure the palette is identical */
gdImagePaletteCopy (im3, im);
/* Draw something */
gdImageRectangle(im3, 0, 0, 15, 20, black);
/* Allow animation compression with transparent pixels */
gdImageColorTransparent (im3, trans);
/* Add the third frame, compressing against the second one */
gdImageGifAnimAdd(im3, out, 0, 0, 0, 100, 1, im2);
/* Write the end marker */
/* gdImageGifAnimEnd(out); is the same as the following: */
putc (';', out);
/* Close file */
fclose(out);
/* Destroy images */
gdImageDestroy(im);
gdImageDestroy(im2);
gdImageDestroy(im3);

void* gdImageGifAnimAddPtr(gdImagePtr im, int *size, int LocalCM, int LeftOfs, int TopOfs, int Delay, int Disposal, gdImagePtr previm) (FUNCTION)

Identical to gdImageGifAnimAdd except that it returns a pointer to a memory area with the GIF data. This memory must be freed by the caller when it is no longer needed. The caller must invoke gdFree(), not free(), unless the caller is absolutely certain that the same implementations of malloc, free, etc. are used both at library build time and at application build time. The 'size' parameter receives the total size of the block of memory.

void gdImageGifAnimEnd(FILE *out)
void gdImageGifAnimEndCtx(gdIOCtx *out) (FUNCTION)

Writes semicolon character (;) to the output file. This terminates the GIF file properly. You can omit the call to gdImageGifAnimEnd and just print out the semicolon.

void* gdImageGifAnimEndPtr(int *size) (FUNCTION)

Returns a one byte string containing the semicolon character (;). Returns a pointer to a memory area with that string. This memory must be freed by the caller when it is no longer needed. The caller must invoke gdFree(), not free(), unless the caller is absolutely certain that the same implementations of malloc, free, etc. are used both at library build time and at application build time. The 'size' parameter receives the total size of the block of memory. The string ";" can be used in place of this function.

void gdImagePng(gdImagePtr im, FILE *out)
void gdImagePngCtx(gdImagePtr im, gdIOCtx *out) (FUNCTION)

gdImagePng outputs the specified image to the specified file in PNG format. The file must be open for writing. Under MSDOS and all versions of Windows, it is important to use "wb" as opposed to simply "w" as the mode when opening the file, and under Unix there is no penalty for doing so. gdImagePng does not close the file; your code must do so.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black, white;
FILE *out;
/* Create the image */
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Allocate background */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);
/* Allocate drawing color */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);
/* Draw rectangle */
gdImageRectangle(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, black);
/* Open output file in binary mode */
out = fopen("rect.png", "wb");
/* Write PNG */
gdImagePng(im, out);
/* Close file */
fclose(out);
/* Destroy image */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImagePngEx(gdImagePtr im, FILE *out, int level)
void gdImagePngCtxEx(gdImagePtr im, gdIOCtx *out, int level) (FUNCTION)

Like gdImagePng, gdImagePngEx outputs the specified image to the specified file in PNG format. In addition, gdImagePngEx allows the level of compression to be specified. A compression level of 0 means "no compression." A compression level of 1 means "compressed, but as quickly as possible." A compression level of 9 means "compressed as much as possible to produce the smallest possible file." A compression level of -1 will use the default compression level at the time zlib was compiled on your system.

For more information, see gdImagePng.

void* gdImagePngPtr(gdImagePtr im, int *size) (FUNCTION)

Identical to gdImagePng except that it returns a pointer to a memory area with the PNG data. This memory must be freed by the caller when it is no longer needed. The caller must invoke gdFree(), not free(), unless the caller is absolutely certain that the same implementations of malloc, free, etc. are used both at library build time and at application build time. The 'size' parameter receives the total size of the block of memory.

void* gdImagePngPtrEx(gdImagePtr im, int *size, int level) (FUNCTION)

Like gdImagePngPtr, gdImagePngPtrEx returns a pointer to a PNG image in allocated memory. In addition, gdImagePngPtrEx allows the level of compression to be specified. A compression level of 0 means "no compression." A compression level of 1 means "compressed, but as quickly as possible." A compression level of 9 means "compressed as much as possible to produce the smallest possible file." A compression level of -1 will use the default compression level at the time zlib was compiled on your system.

For more information, see gdImagePngPtr.

gdImagePngToSink(gdImagePtr im, gdSinkPtr out) (FUNCTION)

gdImagePngToSink is called to write a PNG to a data "sink" (destination) other than a file. Usage is very similar to the gdImagePng function, except that the programmer provides a custom data sink.

The programmer must write an output function which accepts a context pointer, a buffer, and a number of bytes to be written as arguments. This function must write the number of bytes requested and return that number, unless an error has occurred, in which case the function should return -1. The programmer then creates a gdSink structure and sets the sink pointer to the output function and the context pointer to any value which is useful to the programmer.

The example below implements gdImagePng by creating a custom data source and invoking gdImagePngFromSink.

static int stdioSink(void *context, char *buffer, int len)
{
  return fwrite(buffer, 1, len, (FILE *) context);
}

void gdImagePng(gdImagePtr im, FILE *out)
{
  gdSink mySink;
  mySink.context = (void *) out;
  mySink.sink = stdioSink;
  gdImagePngToSink(im, &mySink);
}

void gdImageWBMP(gdImagePtr im, int fg, FILE *out)
gdImageWBMPCtx(gdIOCtx *out) (FUNCTION)(FUNCTION)

gdImageWBMP outputs the specified image to the specified file in WBMP format. The file must be open for writing. Under MSDOS and all versions of Windows, it is important to use "wb" as opposed to simply "w" as the mode when opening the file, and under Unix there is no penalty for doing so. gdImageWBMP does not close the file; your code must do so.

WBMP file support is black and white only. The color index specified by the fg argument is the "foreground," and only pixels of this color will be set in the WBMP file. All other pixels will be considered "background."

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black, white;
FILE *out;
/* Create the image */
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Allocate background */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);
/* Allocate drawing color */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);
/* Draw rectangle */
gdImageRectangle(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, black);
/* Open output file in binary mode */
out = fopen("rect.wbmp", "wb");
/* Write WBMP, with black as foreground */
gdImageWBMP(im, black, out);
/* Close file */
fclose(out);
/* Destroy image */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void* gdImageWBMPPtr(gdImagePtr im, int *size) (FUNCTION)

Identical to gdImageWBMP except that it returns a pointer to a memory area with the WBMP data. This memory must be freed by the caller when it is no longer needed. The caller must invoke gdFree(), not free(), unless the caller is absolutely certain that the same implementations of malloc, free, etc. are used both at library build time and at application build time. The 'size' parameter receives the total size of the block of memory.

void gdImageGd(gdImagePtr im, FILE *out) (FUNCTION)

gdImageGd outputs the specified image to the specified file in the gd image format. The file must be open for writing. Under MSDOS and all versions of Windows, it is important to use "wb" as opposed to simply "w" as the mode when opening the file, and under Unix there is no penalty for doing so. gdImagePng does not close the file; your code must do so.

The gd image format is intended for fast reads and writes of images your program will need frequently to build other images. It is not a compressed format, and is not intended for general use.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black, white;
FILE *out;
/* Create the image */
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Allocate background */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);
/* Allocate drawing color */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);
/* Draw rectangle */
gdImageRectangle(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, black);
/* Open output file in binary mode */
out = fopen("rect.gd", "wb");
/* Write gd format file */
gdImageGd(im, out);
/* Close file */
fclose(out);
/* Destroy image */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void* gdImageGdPtr(gdImagePtr im, int *size) (FUNCTION)

Identical to gdImageGd except that it returns a pointer to a memory area with the GD data. This memory must be freed by the caller when it is no longer needed. The caller must invoke gdFree(), not free(), unless the caller is absolutely certain that the same implementations of malloc, free, etc. are used both at library build time and at application build time. The 'size' parameter receives the total size of the block of memory.

void gdImageGd2(gdImagePtr im, FILE *out, int chunkSize, int fmt)
void gdImageGd2Ctx(gdImagePtr im, gdIOCtx *out, int chunkSize, int fmt) (FUNCTION)

gdImageGd2 outputs the specified image to the specified file in the gd2 image format. The file must be open for writing. Under MSDOS and all versions of Windows, it is important to use "wb" as opposed to simply "w" as the mode when opening the file, and under Unix there is no penalty for doing so. gdImageGd2 does not close the file; your code must do so.

The gd2 image format is intended for fast reads and writes of parts of images. It is a compressed format, and well suited to retrieving smll sections of much larger images. The third and fourth parameters are the 'chunk size' and format resposectively.

The file is stored as a series of compressed subimages, and the Chunk Size determines the sub-image size - a value of zero causes the GD library to use the default.

It is also possible to store GD2 files in an uncompressed format, in which case the fourth parameter should be GD2_FMT_RAW.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black, white;
FILE *out;
/* Create the image */
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Allocate background */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);
/* Allocate drawing color */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);
/* Draw rectangle */
gdImageRectangle(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, black);
/* Open output file in binary mode */
out = fopen("rect.gd", "wb");
/* Write gd2 format file */
gdImageGd2(im, out, 0, GD2_FMT_COMPRESSED);
/* Close file */
fclose(out);
/* Destroy image */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void* gdImageGd2Ptr(gdImagePtr im, int chunkSize, int fmt, int *size) (FUNCTION)

Identical to gdImageGd2 except that it returns a pointer to a memory area with the GD2 data. This memory must be freed by the caller when it is no longer needed. The caller must invoke gdFree(), not free(), unless the caller is absolutely certain that the same implementations of malloc, free, etc. are used both at library build time and at application build time. The 'size' parameter receives the total size of the block of memory.

void gdImageTrueColorToPalette(gdImagePtr im, int ditherFlag, int colorsWanted)
gdImagePtr gdImageCreatePaletteFromTrueColor(gdImagePtr im, int ditherFlag, int colorsWanted) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCreatePaletteFromTrueColor returns a new image. gdImageTrueColorToPalette permanently converts the existing image. The two functions are otherwise identical.

The function converts a truecolor image to a palette-based image, using a high-quality two-pass quantization routine. If ditherFlag is set, the image will be dithered to approximate colors better, at the expense of some obvious "speckling." colorsWanted can be anything up to 256. If the original source image includes photographic information or anything that came out of a JPEG, 256 is strongly recommended. 100% transparency of a single transparent color in the original truecolor image will be preserved. There is no other support for preservation of alpha channel or transparency in the destination image.

For best results, don't use this function -- write real truecolor PNGs and JPEGs. The disk space gain of conversion to palette is not great (for small images it can be negative) and the quality loss is ugly. However, the version of this function included in version 2.0.12 and later does do a better job than the version included prior to 2.0.12.

Drawing Functions

void gdImageSetPixel(gdImagePtr im, int x, int y, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageSetPixel sets a pixel to a particular color index. Always use this function or one of the other drawing functions to access pixels; do not access the pixels of the gdImage structure directly.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green and blue all maximum). */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Set a pixel near the center. */
gdImageSetPixel(im, 50, 50, white);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageLine(gdImagePtr im, int x1, int y1, int x2, int y2, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageLine is used to draw a line between two endpoints (x1,y1 and x2, y2). The line is drawn using the color index specified. Note that the color index can be an actual color returned by gdImageColorAllocate or one of gdStyled, gdBrushed or gdStyledBrushed.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green 
  and blue all maximum). */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Draw a line from the upper left corner to the 
  lower right corner. */
gdImageLine(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, white);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageDashedLine(gdImagePtr im, int x1, int y1, int x2, int y2, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageDashedLine is provided solely for backwards compatibility with gd 1.0. New programs should draw dashed lines using the normal gdImageLine function and the new gdImageSetStyle function.

gdImageDashedLine is used to draw a dashed line between two endpoints (x1,y1 and x2, y2). The line is drawn using the color index specified. The portions of the line that are not drawn are left transparent so the background is visible.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green and blue 
  all maximum). */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Draw a dashed line from the upper left corner 
  to the lower right corner. */
gdImageDashedLine(im, 0, 0, 99, 99);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImagePolygon(gdImagePtr im, gdPointPtr points, int pointsTotal, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImagePolygon is used to draw a polygon with the verticies (at least 3) specified, using the color index specified. See also gdImageFilledPolygon.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
/* Points of polygon */
gdPoint points[3];
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green and 
  blue all maximum). */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Draw a triangle. */
points[0].x = 50;
points[0].y = 0;
points[1].x = 99;
points[1].y = 99;
points[2].x = 0;
points[2].y = 99;
gdImagePolygon(im, points, 3, white);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageOpenPolygon(gdImagePtr im, gdPointPtr points, int pointsTotal, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageOpenPolygon is used to draw a sequence of lines with the verticies (at least 3) specified, using the color index specified. Unlike gdImagePolygon, the enpoints of the line sequence are not connected to a closed polygon.

void gdImageRectangle(gdImagePtr im, int x1, int y1, int x2, int y2, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageRectangle is used to draw a rectangle with the two corners (upper left first, then lower right) specified, using the color index specified.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green and blue all maximum). */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Draw a rectangle occupying the central area. */
gdImageRectangle(im, 25, 25, 74, 74, white);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageFilledPolygon(gdImagePtr im, gdPointPtr points, int pointsTotal, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageFilledPolygon is used to fill a polygon with the verticies (at least 3) specified, using the color index specified. See also gdImagePolygon.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
int red;
/* Points of polygon */
gdPoint points[3];
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green and blue all maximum). */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Allocate the color red. */
red = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 0, 0);  
/* Draw a triangle. */
points[0].x = 50;
points[0].y = 0;
points[1].x = 99;
points[1].y = 99;
points[2].x = 0;
points[2].y = 99;
/* Paint it in white */
gdImageFilledPolygon(im, points, 3, white);
/* Outline it in red; must be done second */
gdImagePolygon(im, points, 3, red);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageFilledRectangle(gdImagePtr im, int x1, int y1, int x2, int y2, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageFilledRectangle is used to draw a solid rectangle with the two corners (upper left first, then lower right) specified, using the color index specified.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green and blue all maximum). */
white = int gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Draw a filled rectangle occupying the central area. */
gdImageFilledRectangle(im, 25, 25, 74, 74, white);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageArc(gdImagePtr im, int cx, int cy, int w, int h, int s, int e, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageArc is used to draw a partial ellipse centered at the given point, with the specified width and height in pixels. The arc begins at the position in degrees specified by s and ends at the position specified by e. The arc is drawn in the color specified by the last argument. A circle can be drawn by beginning from 0 degrees and ending at 360 degrees, with width and height being equal. e must be greater than s. Values greater than 360 are interpreted modulo 360.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 50);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green and blue all maximum). */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Inscribe an ellipse in the image. */
gdImageArc(im, 50, 25, 98, 48, 0, 360, white);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageFilledArc(gdImagePtr im, int cx, int cy, int w, int h, int s, int e, int color, int style) (FUNCTION)

gdImageFilledArc is used to draw a partial ellipse centered at the given point, with the specified width and height in pixels. The arc begins at the position in degrees specified by s and ends at the position specified by e. The arc is filled in the color specified by the second to last argument. A circle can be drawn by beginning from 0 degrees and ending at 360 degrees, with width and height being equal. e must be greater than s. Values greater than 360 are interpreted modulo 360. The last argument is a bitwise OR of the following possibilities:

• gdArc
• gdChord
• gdPie (synonym for gdChord)
• gdNoFill
• gdEdged

gdArc and gdChord are mutually exclusive; gdChord just connects the starting and ending angles with a straight line, while gdArc produces a rounded edge. gdPie is a synonym for gdArc. gdNoFill indicates that the arc or chord should be outlined, not filled. gdEdged, used together with gdNoFill, indicates that the beginning and ending angles should be connected to the center; this is a good way to outline (rather than fill) a 'pie slice'.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 50);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green and blue all maximum). */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Inscribe a filled pie slice in the image. */
gdImageFilledArc(im, 50, 25, 98, 48, 0, 45, white, gdArc);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageFilledEllipse(gdImagePtr im, int cx, int cy, int w, int h, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageFilledEllipse is used to draw an ellipse centered at the given point, with the specified width and height in pixels. The ellipse is filled in the color specified by the last argument.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 50);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green and blue all maximum). */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Inscribe a filled ellipse in the image. */
gdImageFilledEllipse(im, 50, 25, 98, 48, white);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageFillToBorder(gdImagePtr im, int x, int y, int border, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageFillToBorder floods a portion of the image with the specified color, beginning at the specified point and stopping at the specified border color. For a way of flooding an area defined by the color of the starting point, see gdImageFill.

The border color cannot be a special color such as gdTiled; it must be a proper solid color. The fill color can be, however.

Note that gdImageFillToBorder is recursive. It is not the most naive implementation possible, and the implementation is expected to improve, but there will always be degenerate cases in which the stack can become very deep. This can be a problem in MSDOS and MS Windows 3.1 environments. (Of course, in a Unix or Windows 95/98/NT environment with a proper stack, this is not a problem at all.)

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
int red;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 50);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green and blue all maximum). */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Allocate the color red. */
red = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 0, 0);  
/* Inscribe an ellipse in the image. */
gdImageArc(im, 50, 25, 98, 48, 0, 360, white);
/* Flood-fill the ellipse. Fill color is red, border color is
  white (ellipse). */
gdImageFillToBorder(im, 50, 50, white, red);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageFill(gdImagePtr im, int x, int y, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageFill floods a portion of the image with the specified color, beginning at the specified point and flooding the surrounding region of the same color as the starting point. For a way of flooding a region defined by a specific border color rather than by its interior color, see gdImageFillToBorder.

The fill color can be gdTiled, resulting in a tile fill using another image as the tile. However, the tile image cannot be transparent. If the image you wish to fill with has a transparent color index, call gdImageTransparent on the tile image and set the transparent color index to -1 to turn off its transparency.

Note that gdImageFill is recursive. It is not the most naive implementation possible, and the implementation is expected to improve, but there will always be degenerate cases in which the stack can become very deep. This can be a problem in MSDOS and MS Windows environments. (Of course, in a Unix or Windows 95/98/NT environment with a proper stack, this is not a problem at all.)

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
int red;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 50);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green and blue all maximum). */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Allocate the color red. */
red = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 0, 0);  
/* Inscribe an ellipse in the image. */
gdImageArc(im, 50, 25, 98, 48, 0, 360, white);
/* Flood-fill the ellipse. Fill color is red, and will replace the
  black interior of the ellipse. */
gdImageFill(im, 50, 50, red);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageSetAntiAliased(gdImagePtr im, int c) (FUNCTION)

"Antialiasing" is a process by which jagged edges associated with line drawing can be reduced by blending the foreground color with an appropriate percentage of the background, depending on how much of the pixel in question is actually within the boundaries of the line being drawn. All line-drawing functions, such as gdImageLine, gdImageOpenPolygon and gdImagePolygon, will draw antialiased lines if the special "color" gdAntiAliased is used when calling them.

gdImageSetAntiAliased is used to specify the actual foreground color to be used when drawing antialiased lines. You may set any color to be the foreground, however as of version 2.0.12 an alpha channel component is not supported.

Antialiased lines can be drawn on both truecolor and palette-based images. However, attempts to draw antialiased lines on highly complex palette-based backgrounds may not give satisfactory results, due to the limited number of colors available in the palette. Antialiased line-drawing on simple backgrounds should work well with palette-based images; otherwise create or fetch a truecolor image instead.

You need not take any special action when you are finished with antialised line drawing.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im, brush;
int black;
int blue;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
blue = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 255);
gdImageSetAntiAliased(im, blue);
/* Draw a smooth line from the upper left corner to the 
  lower right corner. */
gdImageLine(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, gdAntiAliased);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

See also gdAntiAliased and gdSetAntiAliasedDontBlend.

void gdImageSetAntiAliasedDontBlend(gdImagePtr im, int c) (FUNCTION)

Normally, when drawing lines with the special gdAntiAliased "color," blending with the background to reduce jagged edges is the desired behavior. However, when it is desired that lines not be blended with one particular color when it is encountered in the background, the gdImageSetAntiAliasedDontBlend function can be used to indicate the special color that the foreground should stand out more clearly against.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im, brush;
int black;
int blue;
int white;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
blue = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 255);
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);

gdImageSetAntiAliased(im, blue);
/* The portion of the line that crosses this white rectangle will
  not be blended smoothly */
gdImageSetAntiAliasedDontBlend(im, white);
gdImageFilledRectangle(im, 25, 25, 75, 75, white);
/* Draw a smooth line from the upper left corner 
  to the lower right corner. */
gdImageLine(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, gdAntiAliased);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

See also gdAntiAliased and gdSetAntiAliased.

void gdImageSetBrush(gdImagePtr im, gdImagePtr brush) (FUNCTION)

A "brush" is an image used to draw wide, shaped strokes in another image. Just as a paintbrush is not a single point, a brush image need not be a single pixel. Any gd image can be used as a brush, and by setting the transparent color index of the brush image with gdImageColorTransparent, a brush of any shape can be created. All line-drawing functions, such as gdImageLine, gdImageOpenPolygon and gdImagePolygon, will use the current brush if the special "color" gdBrushed or gdStyledBrushed is used when calling them.

gdImageSetBrush is used to specify the brush to be used in a particular image. You can set any image to be the brush. If the brush image does not have the same color map as the first image, any colors missing from the first image will be allocated. If not enough colors can be allocated, the closest colors already available will be used. This allows arbitrary PNGs to be used as brush images. It also means, however, that you should not set a brush unless you will actually use it; if you set a rapid succession of different brush images, you can quickly fill your color map, and the results will not be optimal.

You need not take any special action when you are finished with a brush. As for any other image, if you will not be using the brush image for any further purpose, you should call gdImageDestroy. You must not use the color gdBrushed if the current brush has been destroyed; you can of course set a new brush to replace it.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im, brush;
FILE *in;
int black;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Open the brush PNG. For best results, portions of the
  brush that should be transparent (ie, not part of the
  brush shape) should have the transparent color index. */
in = fopen("star.png", "rb");
brush = gdImageCreateFromPng(in);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
gdImageSetBrush(im, brush);
/* Draw a line from the upper left corner to the lower right corner
  using the brush. */
gdImageLine(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, gdBrushed);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);
/* Destroy the brush image */
gdImageDestroy(brush);

void gdImageSetTile(gdImagePtr im, gdImagePtr tile) (FUNCTION)

A "tile" is an image used to fill an area with a repeated pattern. Any gd image can be used as a tile, and by setting the transparent color index of the tile image with gdImageColorTransparent, a tile that allows certain parts of the underlying area to shine through can be created. All region-filling functions, such as gdImageFill and gdImageFilledPolygon, will use the current tile if the special "color" gdTiled is used when calling them.

gdImageSetTile is used to specify the tile to be used in a particular image. You can set any image to be the tile. If the tile image does not have the same color map as the first image, any colors missing from the first image will be allocated. If not enough colors can be allocated, the closest colors already available will be used. This allows arbitrary PNGs to be used as tile images. It also means, however, that you should not set a tile unless you will actually use it; if you set a rapid succession of different tile images, you can quickly fill your color map, and the results will not be optimal.

You need not take any special action when you are finished with a tile. As for any other image, if you will not be using the tile image for any further purpose, you should call gdImageDestroy. You must not use the color gdTiled if the current tile has been destroyed; you can of course set a new tile to replace it.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im, tile;
FILE *in;
int black;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Open the tile PNG. For best results, portions of the
  tile that should be transparent (ie, allowing the
  background to shine through) should have the transparent
  color index. */
in = fopen("star.png", "rb");
tile = gdImageCreateFromPng(in);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
gdImageSetTile(im, tile);
/* Fill an area using the tile. */
gdImageFilledRectangle(im, 25, 25, 75, 75, gdTiled);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);
/* Destroy the tile image */
gdImageDestroy(tile);

void gdImageSetStyle(gdImagePtr im, int *style, int styleLength) (FUNCTION)

It is often desirable to draw dashed lines, dotted lines, and other variations on a broken line. gdImageSetStyle can be used to set any desired series of colors, including a special color that leaves the background intact, to be repeated during the drawing of a line.

To use gdImageSetStyle, create an array of integers and assign them the desired series of color values to be repeated. You can assign the special color value gdTransparent to indicate that the existing color should be left unchanged for that particular pixel (allowing a dashed line to be attractively drawn over an existing image).

Then, to draw a line using the style, use the normal gdImageLine function with the special color value gdStyled.

As of version 1.1.1, the style array is copied when you set the style, so you need not be concerned with keeping the array around indefinitely. This should not break existing code that assumes styles are not copied.

You can also combine styles and brushes to draw the brush image at intervals instead of in a continuous stroke. When creating a style for use with a brush, the style values are interpreted differently: zero (0) indicates pixels at which the brush should not be drawn, while one (1) indicates pixels at which the brush should be drawn. To draw a styled, brushed line, you must use the special color value gdStyledBrushed. For an example of this feature in use, see gddemo.c (provided in the distribution).

gdImagePtr im;
int styleDotted[2], styleDashed[6];
FILE *in;
int black;
int red;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
red = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 0, 0);  
/* Set up dotted style. Leave every other pixel alone. */
styleDotted[0] = red;
styleDotted[1] = gdTransparent;
/* Set up dashed style. Three on, three off. */
styleDashed[0] = red;
styleDashed[1] = red;
styleDashed[2] = red;
styleDashed[3] = gdTransparent;
styleDashed[4] = gdTransparent;
styleDashed[5] = gdTransparent;
/* Set dotted style. Note that we have to specify how many pixels are
  in the style! */
gdImageSetStyle(im, styleDotted, 2);
/* Draw a line from the upper left corner to the lower right corner. */
gdImageLine(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, gdStyled);
/* Now the dashed line. */
gdImageSetStyle(im, styleDashed, 6);
gdImageLine(im, 0, 99, 0, 99, gdStyled);

/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file ... */

/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageSetThickness(gdImagePtr im, int thickness) (FUNCTION)

gdImageSetThickness determines the width of lines drawn by the gdImageLine, gdImagePolygon, gdImageOpenPolygon and related functions, in pixels.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green and blue all maximum). */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Set thickness. */
gdImageSetThickness(im, 4);
/* Draw a fat line from the upper left corner to the lower right corner. */
gdImageLine(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, white);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageAlphaBlending(gdImagePtr im, int blending) (FUNCTION)

The gdImageAlphaBlending function allows for two different modes of drawing on truecolor images. In blending mode, which is on by default (gd 2.0.2 and above), the alpha channel component of the color supplied to all drawing functions, such as gdImageSetPixel, determines how much of the underlying color should be allowed to shine through. As a result, gd automatically blends the existing color at that point with the drawing color, and stores the result in the image. The resulting pixel is opaque. In non-blending mode, the drawing color is copied literally with its alpha channel information, replacing the destination pixel. Blending mode is not available when drawing on palette images.

gdImagePtr im;
int red, blue;
im = gdImageCreateTrueColor(100, 100);
/* Background color */
red = gdTrueColor(255, 0, 0);  
gdImageFilledRectangle(im, 0, 0, 100, 100, red);
/* Drawing color. Full transparency would be an alpha channel value
  of 127 (gd has a 7 bit alpha chnanel). 0 is opaque,
  127 is transparent. So cut gdAlphaTransparent in half to get
  50% blending. */
blue = gdTrueColorAlpha(0, 0, 255, gdAlphaTransparent / 2);  
/* Draw with blending. Result will be 50% red, 50% blue: yellow 
  (emitted light, remember, not reflected light. What you learned 
  in Kindergarten is wrong here). */
gdImageAlphaBlending(im, 1);
gdImageFilledRectangle(im, 0, 0, 25, 25, blue);
/* Draw without blending. Result will be 50% blue, 50%
  the background color of the image viewer or web browser
  used; results in browsers that don't support
  semi-transparent pixels are unpredictable! */
gdImageAlphaBlending(im, 0);
gdImageFilledRectangle(im, 75, 75, 25, 25, blue);
/* Write the image to disk, etc. */

void gdImageSaveAlpha(gdImagePtr im, int saveFlag) (FUNCTION)

By default, gd 2.0.2 and above do not attempt to save full alpha channel information (as opposed to single-color transparency) when saving PNG images. (PNG is currently the only output format supported by gd which can accommodate alpa channel information.) This saves space in the output file. If you wish to create an image with alpha channel information for use with tools that support it, call gdImageSaveAlpha(im, 1) to turn on saving of such information, and call gdImageAlphaBlending(im, 0) to turn off alpha blending within the library so that alpha channel information is actually stored in the image rather than being composited immediately at the time that drawing functions are invoked.

void gdImageSetClip(gdImagePtr im, int x1, int y1, int x2, int y2) (FUNCTION)

Establishes a clipping rectangle. Once gdImageSetClip has been called, all future drawing operations will remain within the specified clipping area, until a new gdImageSetClip call takes place. For instance, if a clipping rectangle of 25, 25, 75, 75 has been set within a 100x100 image, a diagonal line from 0,0 to 99,99 will appear only between 25,25 and 75,75.

If gdImageSetClip is never called, the clipping area will be the entire image.

The parameters passed to gdImageSetClip are checked against the dimensions of the image and limited to "safe" values.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green and blue all maximum). */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Set the clipping rectangle. */
gdImageSetClip(im, 25, 25, 75, 75);
/* Draw a line from the upper left corner to the lower right corner. 
  Only the part within the clipping rectangle will appear. */
gdImageLine(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, white);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file ... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

See also gdImageGetClip.

void gdImageGetClip(gdImagePtr im, int *x1P, int *y1P, int *x2P, int *y2P) (FUNCTION)

Fetches the boundaries of the current clipping rectangle.

... Inside a function ... 
gdImagePtr im = gdImageCreateTrueColor(100, 100);
int x1, y1, x2, y2;
gdImageSetClip(im, 25, 25, 75, 75);
gdImageGetClip(im, &x1, &y1, &x2, &y2);
printf("%d %d %d %d\n", x1, y1, x2, y2);

The above code would print:

25 25 75 75

See also gdImageSetClip.

Query Functions

int gdImageAlpha(gdImagePtr im, int color) (MACRO)

gdImageAlpha is a macro which returns the alpha channel component of the specified color index. Alpha channel values vary between 0 (gdAlphaOpaque), which does not blend at all with the background, through 127 (gdAlphaTransparent), which allows the background to shine through 100%. Use this macro rather than accessing the structure members directly.

int gdImageBlue(gdImagePtr im, int color) (MACRO)

gdImageBlue is a macro which returns the blue component of the specified color index. Use this macro rather than accessing the structure members directly.

int gdImageGetPixel(gdImagePtr im, int x, int y) (FUNCTION)

gdImageGetPixel() retrieves the color index of a particular pixel. Always use this function to query pixels; do not access the pixels of the gdImage structure directly.

... inside a function ...
FILE *in;
gdImagePtr im;
int c;
in = fopen("mypng.png", "rb");
im = gdImageCreateFromPng(in);
fclose(in);
c = gdImageGetPixel(im, gdImageSX(im) / 2, gdImageSY(im) / 2);
printf("The value of the center pixel is %d; RGB values are %d,%d,%d\n",
  c, im->red[c], im->green[c], im->blue[c]);
gdImageDestroy(im);

int gdImageBoundsSafe(gdImagePtr im, int x, int y) (FUNCTION)

gdImageBoundsSafe returns true (1) if the specified point is within the current clipping rectangle, false (0) if not. The clipping rectangle is set by gdImageSetClip and defaults to the entire image. This function is intended primarily for use by those who wish to add functions to gd. All of the gd drawing functions already clip safely using this function or its macro equivalent in gd.c, gdImageBoundsSafeMacro.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
if (gdImageBoundsSafe(im, 50, 50)) {
  printf("50, 50 is within the image bounds\n");
} else {
  printf("50, 50 is outside the image bounds\n");
}
gdImageDestroy(im);

int gdImageGreen(gdImagePtr im, int color) (MACRO)

gdImageGreen is a macro which returns the green component of the specified color index. Use this macro rather than accessing the structure members directly.

int gdImageRed(gdImagePtr im, int color) (MACRO)

gdImageRed is a macro which returns the red component of the specified color index. Use this macro rather than accessing the structure members directly.

int gdImageSX(gdImagePtr im) (MACRO)

gdImageSX is a macro which returns the width of the image in pixels. Use this macro rather than accessing the structure members directly.

int gdImageSY(gdImagePtr im) (MACRO)

gdImageSY is a macro which returns the height of the image in pixels. Use this macro rather than accessing the structure members directly.

Fonts and text-handling functions

gdFontPtr gdFontGetSmall(void) (FUNCTION)

Returns a font pointer for the "small" gd font. Your code must include the header file gdfonts.h before calling this function. Under Windows, due to the nature of DLLs, the use of this function is strongly recommended rather than attempting to use the gdFontSmall pointer directly. (You may safely assign the result to a local gdFontPtr variable in your own code.)

See gdImageString for more information and examples, or gdImageStringFT for a freetype-based alternative that supports truetype fonts.

gdFontPtr gdFontGetLarge(void) (FUNCTION)

Returns a font pointer for the "large" gd font. Your code must include the header file gdfontl.h before calling this function. Under Windows, due to the nature of DLLs, the use of this function is strongly recommended rather than attempting to use the gdFontLarge pointer directly. (You may safely assign the result to a local gdFontPtr variable in your own code.)

See gdImageString for more information and examples, or gdImageStringFT for a freetype-based alternative that supports truetype fonts.

gdFontPtr gdFontGetMediumBold(void) (FUNCTION)

Returns a font pointer for the "medium bold" gd font. Your code must include the header file gdfontmb.h before calling this function. Under Windows, due to the nature of DLLs, the use of this function is strongly recommended rather than attempting to use the gdFontMediumBold pointer directly. (You may safely assign the result to a local gdFontPtr variable in your own code.)

See gdImageString for more information and examples, or gdImageStringFT for a freetype-based alternative that supports truetype fonts.

gdFontPtr gdFontGetGiant(void) (FUNCTION)

Returns a font pointer for the "giant" gd font. Your code must include the header file gdfontg.h before calling this function. Under Windows, due to the nature of DLLs, the use of this function is strongly recommended rather than attempting to use the gdFontGiant pointer directly. (You may safely assign the result to a local gdFontPtr variable in your own code.)

See gdImageString for more information and examples, or gdImageStringFT for a freetype-based alternative that supports truetype fonts.

gdFontPtr gdFontGetTiny(void) (FUNCTION)

Returns a font pointer for the "tiny" gd font. Your code must include the header file gdfontt.h before calling this function. Under Windows, due to the nature of DLLs, the use of this function is strongly recommended rather than attempting to use the gdFontTiny pointer directly. (You may safely assign the result to a local gdFontPtr variable in your own code.)

See gdImageString for more information and examples, or gdImageStringFT for a freetype-based alternative that supports truetype fonts.

void gdImageChar(gdImagePtr im, gdFontPtr font, int x, int y, int c, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageChar is used to draw single characters on the image. (To draw multiple characters, use gdImageString or gdImageString16. See also gdImageStringFT for a high quality solution.) The second argument is a pointer to a font definition structure; five fonts are provided with gd, gdFontTiny, gdFontSmall, gdFontMediumBold, gdFontLarge, and gdFontGiant.

You must include the files "gdfontt.h", "gdfonts.h", "gdfontmb.h", "gdfontl.h" and "gdfontg.h" respectively and (if you are not using a library-based approach) link with the corresponding .c files to use the provided fonts.

Windows DLL users: although you can use these DLL-exported pointers directly, you cannot easily assign them to other pointers. This will cause hard-to-debug problems. To avoid such troubles, you should call the functions gdFontGetTiny(), gdFontGetSmall(), gdFontGetMediumBold(), gdFontGetLarge(), and gdFontGetGiant() in order to obtain pointers to the fonts under Windows.

The character specified by the fifth argument is drawn from left to right in the specified color. (See gdImageCharUp for a way of drawing vertical text.) Pixels not set by a particular character retain their previous color.

#include "gd.h"
#include "gdfontl.h"
... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green and blue all maximum). */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Draw a character. */
gdImageChar(im, gdFontGetLarge(), 0, 0, 'Q', white);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageCharUp(gdImagePtr im, gdFontPtr font, int x, int y, int c, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCharUp is used to draw single characters on the image, rotated 90 degrees. (To draw multiple characters, use gdImageStringUp or gdImageStringUp16.) The second argument is a pointer to a font definition structure; five fonts are provided with gd, gdFontTiny, gdFontSmall, gdFontMediumBold, gdFontLarge, and gdFontGiant. You must include the files "gdfontt.h", "gdfonts.h", "gdfontmb.h", "gdfontl.h" and "gdfontg.h" respectively and (if you are not using a library-based approach) link with the corresponding .c files to use the provided fonts.

Windows DLL users: although you can use these DLL-exported pointers directly, you cannot easily assign them to other pointers. This will cause hard-to-debug problems. To avoid such troubles, you should call the functions gdFontGetTiny(), gdFontGetSmall(), gdFontGetMediumBold(), gdFontGetLarge(), and gdFontGetGiant() in order to obtain pointers to the fonts under Windows.

The character specified by the fifth argument is drawn from bottom to top, rotated at a 90-degree angle, in the specified color. (See gdImageChar for a way of drawing horizontal text.) Pixels not set by a particular character retain their previous color.

#include "gd.h"
#include "gdfontl.h"
... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green and blue all maximum). */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Draw a character upwards so it rests against the top of the image. */
gdImageCharUp(im, gdFontGetLarge(),
  0, gdFontGetLarge()->h, 'Q', white);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageString(gdImagePtr im, gdFontPtr font, int x, int y, unsigned char *s, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageString is used to draw multiple characters on the image. (To draw single characters, use gdImageChar.) The second argument is a pointer to a font definition structure; five fonts are provided with gd, gdFontTiny, gdFontSmall, gdFontMediumBold, gdFontLarge, and gdFontGiant. You must include the files "gdfontt.h", "gdfonts.h", "gdfontmb.h", "gdfontl.h" and "gdfontg.h" respectively and (if you are not using a library-based approach) link with the corresponding .c files to use the provided fonts.

Windows DLL users: although you can use these DLL-exported pointers directly, you cannot easily assign them to other pointers. This will cause hard-to-debug problems. To avoid such troubles, you should call the functions gdFontGetTiny(), gdFontGetSmall(), gdFontGetMediumBold(), gdFontGetLarge(), and gdFontGetGiant() in order to obtain pointers to the fonts under Windows.

The null-terminated C string specified by the fifth argument is drawn from left to right in the specified color. (See gdImageStringUp for a way of drawing vertical text. See also gdImageStringFT for a high quality solution.) Pixels not set by a particular character retain their previous color.

#include "gd.h"
#include "gdfontl.h"
#include <string.h>
... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
/* String to draw. */
char *s = "Hello.";
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green and blue all maximum). */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Draw a centered string. */
gdImageString(im, gdFontGetLarge(),
  im->sx / 2 - (strlen(s) * gdFontGetLarge()->w / 2),
  im->sy / 2 - gdFontGetLarge()->h / 2,
  s, white);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageString16(gdImagePtr im, gdFontPtr font, int x, int y, unsigned short *s, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageString16 is used to draw multiple 16-bit characters on the image. (To draw single characters, use gdImageChar16.) The second argument is a pointer to a font definition structure; no 16-bit fonts are provided with gd as standard equipment and there does not seem to be much momentum to create them although the bdftogd script can do so. The preferred solution is gdImageStringFT, which uses freetype to provide truetype font support.

Windows DLL users: although you can use these DLL-exported pointers directly, you cannot easily assign them to other pointers. This will cause hard-to-debug problems. To avoid such troubles, you should call the functions gdFontGetTiny(), gdFontGetSmall(), gdFontGetMediumBold(), gdFontGetLarge(), and gdFontGetGiant() in order to obtain pointers to the fonts under Windows.

The null-terminated string of characters represented as 16-bit unsigned short integers specified by the fifth argument is drawn from left to right in the specified color. (See gdImageStringUp16 for a way of drawing vertical text.) Pixels not set by a particular character retain their previous color.

This function was added in gd1.3 to provide a means of rendering fonts with more than 256 characters for those who have them. A more frequently used routine is gdImageString.

void gdImageStringUp(gdImagePtr im, gdFontPtr font, int x, int y, unsigned char *s, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageStringUp is used to draw multiple characters on the image, rotated 90 degrees. (To draw single characters, use gdImageCharUp.) The second argument is a pointer to a font definition structure; five fonts are provided with gd, gdFontTiny, gdFontSmall, gdFontMediumBold, gdFontLarge, and gdFontGiant. You must include the files "gdfontt.h", "gdfonts.h", "gdfontmb.h", "gdfontl.h" and "gdfontg.h" respectively and (if you are not using a library-based approach) link with the corresponding .c files to use the provided fonts.

Windows DLL users: although you can use these DLL-exported pointers directly, you cannot easily assign them to other pointers. This will cause hard-to-debug problems. To avoid such troubles, you should call the functions gdFontGetTiny(), gdFontGetSmall(), gdFontGetMediumBold(), gdFontGetLarge(), and gdFontGetGiant() in order to obtain pointers to the fonts under Windows.

The null-terminated C string specified by the fifth argument is drawn from bottom to top (rotated 90 degrees) in the specified color. (See gdImageString for a way of drawing horizontal text.) Pixels not set by a particular character retain their previous color.

#include "gd.h"
#include "gdfontl.h"
#include <string.h>
... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
/* String to draw. */
char *s = "Hello.";
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color white (red, green and blue all maximum). */
white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 255, 255);  
/* Draw a centered string going upwards. Axes are reversed,
  and Y axis is decreasing as the string is drawn. */
gdImageStringUp(im, gdFontGetLarge(),
  im->w / 2 - gdFontGetLarge()->h / 2,
  im->h / 2 + (strlen(s) * gdFontGetLarge()->w / 2),
  s, white);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageStringUp16(gdImagePtr im, gdFontPtr font, int x, int y, unsigned short *s, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageString is used to draw multiple 16-bit characters vertically on the image. (To draw single characters, use gdImageChar.) The second argument is a pointer to a font definition structure; five fonts are provided with gd, gdFontTiny, gdFontSmall, gdFontMediumBold, gdFontLarge, and gdFontGiant. You must include the files "gdfontt.h", "gdfonts.h", "gdfontmb.h", "gdfontl.h" and "gdfontg.h" respectively and (if you are not using a library-based approach) link with the corresponding .c files to use the provided fonts.

Windows DLL users: although you can use these DLL-exported pointers directly, you cannot easily assign them to other pointers. This will cause hard-to-debug problems. To avoid such troubles, you should call the functions gdFontGetTiny(), gdFontGetSmall(), gdFontGetMediumBold(), gdFontGetLarge(), and gdFontGetGiant() in order to obtain pointers to the fonts under Windows.

The null-terminated string of characters represented as 16-bit unsigned short integers specified by the fifth argument is drawn from bottom to top in the specified color. (See gdImageStringUp16 for a way of drawing horizontal text.) Pixels not set by a particular character retain their previous color.

This function was added in gd1.3 to provide a means of rendering fonts with more than 256 characters for those who have them. A more frequently used routine is gdImageStringUp.

int gdFTUseFontConfig(int flag) (FUNCTION)

GD 2.0.29 introduced the ability to use fontconfig patterns rather than font file names as parameters to gdImageStringFT, gdImageStringFTEx and gdImageStringFTCircle. For backwards compatibility reasons, the fontlist parameter to those functions is still expected to be a full or partial font file path name or list thereof by default. However, as a convenience, a single call to gdFTUseFontConfig with a nonzero parameter configures gd to expect the fontlist parameter to be a fontconfig pattern. Regardless of whether the flag argument is nonzero, this function returns true when the fontconfig library is available and false when it is not. When fontconfig is not available, the fontlist parameter always behaves as in previous versions of GD.

#include "gd.h"
#include <string.h>
... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
int brect[8];
int x, y;
char *err;

char *s = "Hello."; /* String to draw. */
double sz = 40.;
char *fc = "times:bold:italic"; /* fontconfig pattern */

/* Signal that all freetype font calls in this program will receive
  fontconfig patterns rather than filenames of font files */
gdUseFontConfig(1);

/* obtain brect so that we can size the image */
err = gdImageStringFT(NULL,&brect[0],0,fc,sz,0.,0,0,s);
if (err) {fprintf(stderr,err); return 1;}

/* create an image big enough for the string plus a little whitespace */
x = brect[2]-brect[6] + 6;
y = brect[3]-brect[7] + 6;
im = gdImageCreate(x,y);

/* Background color (first allocated) */
white = gdImageColorResolve(im, 255, 255, 255);
black = gdImageColorResolve(im, 0, 0, 0);

/* render the string, offset origin to center string*/
/* note that we use top-left coordinate for adjustment
 * since gd origin is in top-left with y increasing downwards. */
x = 3 - brect[6];
y = 3 - brect[7];
err = gdImageStringFT(im,&brect[0],black,fc,sz,0.0,x,y,s);
if (err) {fprintf(stderr,err); return 1;}

char *gdImageStringFT(gdImagePtr im, int *brect, int fg, char *fontname, double ptsize, double angle, int x, int y, char *string) (FUNCTION)

RECOMMENDED. New in 1.8.4. gdImageStringFT draws text using the FreeType 2.x library.

gdImageStringFT draws a string of anti-aliased characters on the image using the FreeType library to render user-supplied TrueType fonts. We do not provide TrueType fonts (.ttf and .ttc files). Obtaining them is entirely up to you. The string is anti-aliased, meaning that there should be fewer "jaggies" visible. The fontname is the full pathname to a TrueType font file, or a font face name if the GDFONTPATH environment variable or the compiled-in DEFAULT_FONTPATH macro of gdft.c have been set intelligently. In the absence of a full path, the font face name may be presented with or without extension (2.0.26).

The null-terminated string argument is considered to be encoded via the UTF_8 standard; also, HTML entities are supported, including decimal, hexadecimal, and named entities (2.0.26). Those who are passing ordinary ASCII strings may have difficulty with the & character unless encoded correctly as & but should have no other difficulties.

The string may be arbitrarily scaled (ptsize) and rotated (angle in radians). The direction of rotation is counter-clockwise, with 0 radians (0 degrees) at 3 o'clock and PI/2 radians (90 degrees) at 12 o'clock.

The user-supplied int brect[8] array is filled on return from gdImageStringFT with the 8 elements representing the 4 corner coordinates of the bounding rectangle (the smallest rectangle that completely surrounds the rendered string and does not intersect any pixel of the rendered string).

0	lower left corner, X position
1	lower left corner, Y position
2	lower right corner, X position
3	lower right corner, Y position
4	upper right corner, X position
5	upper right corner, Y position
6	upper left corner, X position
7	upper left corner, Y position

The points are relative to the text regardless of the angle, so "upper left" means in the top left-hand corner seeing the text horizontally.

Use a NULL gdImagePtr to get the bounding rectangle without rendering. This is a relatively cheap operation if followed by a rendering of the same string, because of the caching of the partial rendering during bounding rectangle calculation.

The string is rendered in the color indicated by the gf color index. Use the negative of the desired color index to disable anti-aliasing.

The string may contain UTF-8 sequences like: "&#192;"

gdImageStringFT will return a null char* on success, or an error string on failure.

#include "gd.h"
#include <string.h>
... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int white;
int brect[8];
int x, y;
char *err;

char *s = "Hello."; /* String to draw. */
double sz = 40.;
char *f = "/usr/local/share/ttf/Times.ttf";  /* User supplied font */

/* obtain brect so that we can size the image */
err = gdImageStringFT(NULL,&brect[0],0,f,sz,0.,0,0,s);
if (err) {fprintf(stderr,err); return 1;}

/* create an image big enough for the string plus a little whitespace */
x = brect[2]-brect[6] + 6;
y = brect[3]-brect[7] + 6;
im = gdImageCreate(x,y);

/* Background color (first allocated) */
white = gdImageColorResolve(im, 255, 255, 255);
black = gdImageColorResolve(im, 0, 0, 0);

/* render the string, offset origin to center string*/
/* note that we use top-left coordinate for adjustment
 * since gd origin is in top-left with y increasing downwards. */
x = 3 - brect[6];
y = 3 - brect[7];
err = gdImageStringFT(im,&brect[0],black,f,sz,0.0,x,y,s);
if (err) {fprintf(stderr,err); return 1;}

/* Write img to stdout */
gdImagePng(im, stdout);

/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

See also gdImageStringFTEx.

char *gdImageStringFTEx(gdImagePtr im, int *brect, int fg, char *fontname, double ptsize, double angle, int x, int y, char *string, gdFTStringExtraPtr strex) (FUNCTION)

New in 2.0.5, also found in common third-party versions of gd. gdImageStringFTEx extends the capabilities of gdImageStringFT by providing a way to pass additional parameters.

If the strex parameter is not null, it must point to a gdFTStringExtra structure. As of gd 2.0.5, this structure is defined as follows:

typedef struct {
       /* logical OR of gdFTEX_ values */
       int flags; 
       /* fine tune line spacing for '\n' */
       double linespacing; 
       /* Preferred character mapping */
       int charmap;
       /* Rendering resolution */
       int hdpi;
       int vdpi;
       char *xshow;
       char *fontpath;
} gdFTStringExtra, *gdFTStringExtraPtr;

To output multiline text with a specific line spacing, include gdFTEX_LINESPACE in the setting of flags:

flags |= gdFTEX_LINESPACE;

And also set linespacing to the desired spacing, expressed as a multiple of the font height. Thus a line spacing of 1.0 is the minimum to guarantee that lines of text do not collide.

If gdFTEX_LINESPACE is not present, or strex is null, or gdImageStringFT is called, linespacing defaults to 1.05.

To specify a preference for Unicode, Shift_JIS Big5 character encoding, set or To output multiline text with a specific line spacing, include gdFTEX_CHARMAP in the setting of flags:

flags |= gdFTEX_CHARMAP;

And set charmap to the desired value, which can be any of gdFTEX_Unicode, gdFTEX_Shift_JIS, gdFTEX_Big5, or gdFTEX_Adobe_Custom. If you do not specify a preference, Unicode will be tried first. If the preferred character mapping is not found in the font, other character mappings are attempted.

GD operates on the assumption that the output image will be rendered to a computer screen. By default, gd passes a resolution of 96 dpi to the freetype text rendering engine. This influences the "hinting" decisions made by the renderer. To specify a different resolution, set hdpi and vdpi accordingly (in dots per inch) and add gdFTEX_RESOLUTION to flags:

flags | gdFTEX_RESOLUTION;

GD 2.0.29 and later will normally attempt to apply kerning tables, if fontconfig is available, to adjust the relative positions of consecutive characters more ideally for that pair of characters. This can be turn off by specifying the gdFTEX_DISABLE_KERNING flag:

flags | gdFTEX_DISABLE_KERNING;

GD 2.0.29 and later can return a vector of individual character position advances, occasionally useful in applications that must know exactly where each character begins. This is returned in the xshow element of the gdFTStringExtra structure if the gdFTEX_XSHOW flag is set:

flags | gdFTEX_XSHOW;

The caller is responsible for calling gdFree() on the xshow element after the call if gdFTEX_XSHOW is set.

GD 2.0.29 and later can also return the path to the actual font file used if the gdFTEX_RETURNFONTPATHNAME flag is set. This is useful because GD 2.0.29 and above are capable of selecting a font automatically based on a fontconfig font pattern when fontconfig is available. This information is returned in the fontpath element of the gdFTStringExtra structure.

flags | gdFTEX_RETURNFONTPATHNAME;

The caller is responsible for calling gdFree() on the fontpath element after the call if gdFTEX_RETURNFONTPATHNAME is set.

GD 2.0.29 and later can use fontconfig to resolve font names, including fontconfig patterns, if the gdFTEX_FONTCONFIG flag is set. As a convenience, this behavior can be made the default by calling gdFTUseFontConfig with a nonzero value. In that situation it is not necessary to set the gdFTEX_FONTCONFIG flag on every call; however explicit font path names can still be used if the gdFTEX_FONTPATHNAME flag is set:

flags | gdFTEX_FONTPATHNAME;

Unless gdFTUseFontConfig has been called with a nonzero value, GD 2.0.29 and later will still expect the fontlist argument to the freetype text output functions to be a font file name or list thereof as in previous versions. If you do not wish to make fontconfig the default, it is still possible to force the use of fontconfig for a single call to the freetype text output functions by setting the gdFTEX_FONTCONFIG flag:

flags | gdFTEX_FONTCONFIG;

GD 2.0.29 and above can use fontconfig to resolve font names, including fontconfig patterns, if the gdFTEX_FONTCONFIG flag is set. As a convenience, this behavior can be made the default by calling gdFTUseFontConfig with a nonzero value. In that situation it is not necessary to set the gdFTEX_FONTCONFIG flag on every call; however explicit font path names can still be used if the gdFTEX_FONTPATHNAME flag is set:

flags | gdFTEX_FONTPATHNAME;

For more information, see gdImageStringFT.

char *gdImageStringFTCircle(gdImagePtr im, int cx, int cy, double radius, double textRadius, double fillPortion, char *font, double points, char *top, char *bottom, int fgcolor) (FUNCTION)

Draws the text strings specified by top and bottom on im, curved along the edge of a circle of radius radius, with its center at cx and cy. top is written clockwise along the top; bottom is written counterclockwise along the bottom. textRadius determines the "height" of each character; if textRadius is 1/2 of radius, characters extend halfway from the edge to the center. fillPortion varies from 0 to 1.0, with useful values from about 0.4 to 0.9, and determines how much of the 180 degrees of arc assigned to each section of text is actually occupied by text; 0.9 looks better than 1.0 which is rather crowded. font is a freetype font; see gdImageStringFT. points is passed to the freetype engine and has an effect on hinting; although the size of the text is determined by radius, textRadius, and fillPortion, you should pass a point size that "hints" appropriately -- if you know the text will be large, pass a large point size such as 24.0 to get the best results. fgcolor can be any color, and may have an alpha component, do blending, etc.

Returns 0 on success, or an error string otherwise.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <gd.h>

int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
        FILE *in;
        FILE *out;
        gdImagePtr im;
        int radius;
        /* Create an image of text on a circle, with an
                alpha channel so that we can copy it onto a
                background */
        in = fopen("mypicture.jpg", "rb");
        if (!in) {
                im = gdImageCreateTrueColor(300, 300);
        } else {
                im = gdImageCreateFromJpeg(in);
                fclose(in);
        }
        if (gdImageSX(im) < gdImageSY(im)) {
                radius = gdImageSX(im) / 2;
        } else {
                radius = gdImageSY(im) / 2;
        }
        gdStringFTCircle(
                im,
                gdImageSX(im) / 2,
                gdImageSY(im) / 2,
                radius,
                radius / 2,
                0.8,
                "arial",
                24,
                "top text",
                "bottom text",
                gdTrueColorAlpha(240, 240, 255, 32));
        out = fopen("gdfx.png", "wb");
        if (!out) {
                fprintf(stderr, "Can't create gdfx.png\n");
                return 1;
        }
        gdImagePng(im, out);
        fclose(out);
        gdImageDestroy(im);
        return 0;
}

For more information, see gdImageStringFTEx and gdImageSquareToCircle.

char *gdImageStringTTF(gdImagePtr im, int *brect, int fg, char *fontname, double ptsize, double angle, int x, int y, char *string) (FUNCTION)

DEPRECATED. This function simply invokes gdImageStringFT for backwards compatibility with old code that was written with FreeType 1.x.

int gdFontCacheSetup(void) (FUNCTION)

This function initializes the font cache for freetype text output functions such as gdImageStringFTEx. If this function is not called by the programmer, it is invoked automatically on the first truetype text output call, which is perfectly safe unless the application is multithreaded. Multithreaded applications should directly invoke this function before allowing any thread to use freetype text output. Returns 0 on success, nonzero if the freetype library fails to initialize.

void gdFontCacheShutdown(void) (FUNCTION)

This function releases the memory used by the freetype font cache and the text output mutex. Applications that use gd for their entire lifetime, then exit, need not call this function.

Color-handling functions

int gdImageColorAllocate(gdImagePtr im, int r, int g, int b) (FUNCTION)

gdImageColorAllocate finds the first available color index in the image specified, sets its RGB values to those requested (255 is the maximum for each), and returns the index of the new color table entry, or an RGBA value in the case of a truecolor image; in either case you can then use the returned value as a parameter to drawing functions. When creating a new palette-based image, the first time you invoke this function, you are setting the background color for that image.

In the event that all gdMaxColors colors (256) have already been allocated, gdImageColorAllocate will return -1 to indicate failure. (This is not uncommon when working with existing PNG files that already use 256 colors.) Note that gdImageColorAllocate does not check for existing colors that match your request; see gdImageColorExact, gdImageColorClosest and gdImageColorClosestHWB for ways to locate existing colors that approximate the color desired in situations where a new color is not available. Also see gdImageColorResolve, new in gd-1.6.2.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int red;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color red. */
red = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 0, 0);  
/* Draw a dashed line from the upper left corner 
  to the lower right corner. */
gdImageDashedLine(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, red);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as saving 
  it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

int gdImageColorAllocateAlpha(gdImagePtr im, int r, int g, int b, int a) (FUNCTION)

gdImageColorAllocateAlpha finds the first available color index in the image specified, sets its RGBA values to those requested (255 is the maximum for red, green and blue, and 127 represents full transparency for alpha), and returns the index of the new color table entry, or an RGBA value in the case of a truecolor image; in either case you can then use the returned value as a parameter to drawing functions. When creating a new palette-based image, the first time you invoke this function, you are setting the background color for that image.

In the event that all gdMaxColors colors (256) have already been allocated, gdImageColorAllocate will return -1 to indicate failure. (This is not uncommon when working with existing palette-based PNG files that already use 256 colors.) Note that gdImageColorAllocateAlpha does not check for existing colors that match your request; see gdImageColorExactAlpha and gdImageColorClosestAlpha for ways to locate existing colors that approximate the color desired in situations where a new color is not available. Also see gdImageColorResolveAlpha.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
int red;
im = gdImageCreate(100, 100);
/* Background color (first allocated) */
black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 0);  
/* Allocate the color red, 50% transparent. */
red = gdImageColorAllocateAlpha(im, 255, 0, 0, 64);  
/* Draw a dashed line from the upper left corner to the lower right corner. */
gdImageDashedLine(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, red);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

int gdImageColorClosest(gdImagePtr im, int r, int g, int b) (FUNCTION)

gdImageColorClosest searches the colors which have been defined thus far in the image specified and returns the index of the color with RGB values closest to those of the request. (Closeness is determined by Euclidian distance, which is used to determine the distance in three-dimensional color space between colors.)

If no colors have yet been allocated in the image, gdImageColorClosest returns -1.

When applied to a truecolor image, this function always succeeds in returning the desired color.

This function is most useful as a backup method for choosing a drawing color when an image already contains gdMaxColors (256) colors and no more can be allocated. (This is not uncommon when working with existing PNG files that already use many colors.) See gdImageColorExact for a method of locating exact matches only.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
FILE *in;
int red;
/* Let's suppose that photo.png is a scanned photograph with
  many colors. */
in = fopen("photo.png", "rb");
im = gdImageCreateFromPng(in);
fclose(in);
/* Try to allocate red directly */
red = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 0, 0);  
/* If we fail to allocate red... */
if (red == (-1)) {
  /* Find the closest color instead. */
  red = gdImageColorClosest(im, 255, 0, 0);
}
/* Draw a dashed line from the upper left corner to the lower right corner */
gdImageDashedLine(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, red);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

int gdImageColorClosestAlpha(gdImagePtr im, int r, int g, int b, int a) (FUNCTION)

gdImageColorClosest searches the colors which have been defined thus far in the image specified and returns the index of the color with RGBA values closest to those of the request. (Closeness is determined by Euclidian distance, which is used to determine the distance in four-dimensional color/alpha space between colors.)

If no colors have yet been allocated in the image, gdImageColorClosestAlpha returns -1.

When applied to a truecolor image, this function always succeeds in returning the desired color.

This function is most useful as a backup method for choosing a drawing color when a palette-based image already contains gdMaxColors (256) colors and no more can be allocated. (This is not uncommon when working with existing palette-based PNG files that already use many colors.) See gdImageColorExactAlpha for a method of locating exact matches only.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
FILE *in;
int red;
/* Let's suppose that photo.png is a scanned photograph with
  many colors. */
in = fopen("photo.png", "rb");
im = gdImageCreateFromPng(in);
fclose(in);
/* Try to allocate red, 50% transparent, directly */
red = gdImageColorAllocateAlpha(im, 255, 0, 0, 64);  
/* If we fail to allocate red... */
if (red == (-1)) {
  /* Find the closest color instead. */
  red = gdImageColorClosestAlpha(im, 255, 0, 0, 64);
}
/* Draw a dashed line from the upper left corner to the lower right corner */
gdImageDashedLine(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, red);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

int gdImageColorClosestHWB(gdImagePtr im, int r, int g, int b) (FUNCTION)

gdImageColorClosestHWB searches the colors which have been defined thus far in the image specified and returns the index of the color with hue, whiteness and blackness closest to the requested color. This scheme is typically superior to the Euclidian distance scheme used by gdImageColorClosest.

If no colors have yet been allocated in the image, gdImageColorClosestHWB returns -1.

When applied to a truecolor image, this function always succeeds in returning the desired color.

This function is most useful as a backup method for choosing a drawing color when an image already contains gdMaxColors (256) colors and no more can be allocated. (This is not uncommon when working with existing PNG files that already use many colors.) See gdImageColorExact for a method of locating exact matches only.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
FILE *in;
int red;
/* Let's suppose that photo.png is a scanned photograph with
  many colors. */
in = fopen("photo.png", "rb");
im = gdImageCreateFromPng(in);
fclose(in);
/* Try to allocate red directly */
red = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 0, 0);  
/* If we fail to allocate red... */
if (red == (-1)) {
  /* Find the closest color instead. */
  red = gdImageColorClosestHWB(im, 255, 0, 0);
}
/* Draw a dashed line from the upper left corner to the lower right corner */
gdImageDashedLine(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, red);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

int gdImageColorExact(gdImagePtr im, int r, int g, int b) (FUNCTION)

gdImageColorExact searches the colors which have been defined thus far in the image specified and returns the index of the first color with RGB values which exactly match those of the request. If no allocated color matches the request precisely, gdImageColorExact returns -1. See gdImageColorClosest for a way to find the color closest to the color requested.

When applied to a truecolor image, this function always succeeds in returning the desired color.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int red;
in = fopen("photo.png", "rb");
im = gdImageCreateFromPng(in);
fclose(in);
/* The image may already contain red; if it does, we'll save a slot
  in the color table by using that color. */
/* Try to allocate red directly */
red = gdImageColorExact(im, 255, 0, 0);
/* If red isn't already present... */
if (red == (-1)) {
  /* Second best: try to allocate it directly. */
  red = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255, 0, 0);  
  /* Out of colors, so find the closest color instead. */
  red = gdImageColorClosest(im, 255, 0, 0);
}
/* Draw a dashed line from the upper left corner to the lower right corner */
gdImageDashedLine(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, red);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

int gdImageColorResolve(gdImagePtr im, int r, int g, int b) (FUNCTION)

gdImageColorResolve searches the colors which have been defined thus far in the image specified and returns the index of the first color with RGB values which exactly match those of the request. If no allocated color matches the request precisely, then gdImageColorResolve tries to allocate the exact color. If there is no space left in the color table then gdImageColorResolve returns the closest color (as in gdImageColorClosest). This function always returns an index of a color.

When applied to a truecolor image, this function always succeeds in returning the desired color.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int red;
in = fopen("photo.png", "rb");
im = gdImageCreateFromPng(in);
fclose(in);
/* The image may already contain red; if it does, we'll save a slot
  in the color table by using that color. */
/* Get index of red, or color closest to red */
red = gdImageColorResolve(im, 255, 0, 0);
/* Draw a dashed line from the upper left corner to the lower right corner */
gdImageDashedLine(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, red);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

int gdImageColorResolveAlpha(gdImagePtr im, int r, int g, int b, int a) (FUNCTION)

gdImageColorResolveAlpha searches the colors which have been defined thus far in the image specified and returns the index of the first color with RGBA values which exactly match those of the request. If no allocated color matches the request precisely, then gdImageColorResolveAlpha tries to allocate the exact color. If there is no space left in the color table then gdImageColorResolveAlpha returns the closest color (as in gdImageColorClosestAlpha). This function always returns an index of a color.

When applied to a truecolor image, this function always succeeds in returning the desired color.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int red;
in = fopen("photo.png", "rb");
im = gdImageCreateFromPng(in);
fclose(in);
/* The image may already contain red; if it does, 
  we'll save a slot in the color table by using that color. */
/* Get index of red, 50% transparent, or the next best thing */
red = gdImageColorResolveAlpha(im, 255, 0, 0, 64);
/* Draw a dashed line from the upper left corner to the lower right corner */
gdImageDashedLine(im, 0, 0, 99, 99, red);
/* ... Do something with the image, such as saving 
  it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

int gdImageColorsTotal(gdImagePtr im) (MACRO)

gdImageColorsTotal is a macro which returns the number of colors currently allocated in a palette image. For truecolor images, the result of this call is undefined and should not be used.

int gdImageRed(gdImagePtr im, int c) (MACRO)

gdImageRed is a macro which returns the red portion of the specified color in the image. This macro works for both palette and truecolor images.

int gdImageGreen(gdImagePtr im, int c) (MACRO)

gdImageGreen is a macro which returns the green portion of the specified color in the image. This macro works for both palette and truecolor images.

int gdImageBlue(gdImagePtr im, int c) (MACRO)

gdImageBlue is a macro which returns the blue portion of the specified color in the image. This macro works for both palette and truecolor images.

int gdImageGetInterlaced(gdImagePtr im) (MACRO)

gdImageGetInterlaced is a macro which returns true (1) if the image is interlaced, false (0) if not. Use this macro to obtain this information; do not access the structure directly. See gdImageInterlace for a means of interlacing images.

int gdImageGetTransparent(gdImagePtr im) (MACRO)

gdImageGetTransparent is a macro which returns the current transparent color index in the image. If there is no transparent color, gdImageGetTransparent returns -1. Use this macro to obtain this information; do not access the structure directly.

void gdImageColorDeallocate(gdImagePtr im, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageColorDeallocate marks the specified color as being available for reuse. It does not attempt to determine whether the color index is still in use in the image. After a call to this function, the next call to gdImageColorAllocate for the same image will set new RGB values for that color index, changing the color of any pixels which have that index as a result. If multiple calls to gdImageColorDeallocate are made consecutively, the lowest-numbered index among them will be reused by the next gdImageColorAllocate call.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int red, blue;
in = fopen("photo.png", "rb");
im = gdImageCreateFromPng(in);
fclose(in);
/* Look for red in the color table. */
red = gdImageColorExact(im, 255, 0, 0);
/* If red is present... */
if (red != (-1)) {
  /* Deallocate it. */
  gdImageColorDeallocate(im, red);
  /* Allocate blue, reusing slot in table.
    Existing red pixels will change color. */
  blue = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0, 0, 255);
}
/* ... Do something with the image, such as 
  saving it to a file... */
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageColorTransparent(gdImagePtr im, int color) (FUNCTION)

gdImageColorTransparent sets the transparent color index for the specified image to the specified index. To indicate that there should be no transparent color, invoke gdImageColorTransparent with a color index of -1. Note that JPEG images do not support transparency, so this setting has no effect when writing JPEG images.

The color index used should be an index allocated by gdImageColorAllocate, whether explicitly invoked by your code or implicitly invoked by loading an image. In order to ensure that your image has a reasonable appearance when viewed by users who do not have transparent background capabilities (or when you are writing a JPEG-format file, which does not support transparency), be sure to give reasonable RGB values to the color you allocate for use as a transparent color, even though it will be transparent on systems that support PNG transparency.

... inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im;
int black;
FILE *in, *out;
in = fopen("photo.png", "rb");
im = gdImageCreateFromPng(in);
fclose(in);
/* Look for black in the color table and make it transparent. */
black = gdImageColorExact(im, 0, 0, 0);
/* If black is present... */
if (black != (-1)) {
  /* Make it transparent */
  gdImageColorTransparent(im, black);
}
/* Save the newly-transparent image back to the file */
out = fopen("photo.png", "wb");
gdImagePng(im, out);
fclose(out);
/* Destroy it */
gdImageDestroy(im);

void gdImageTrueColor(int red, int green, int blue) (MACRO)

gdImageTrueColor returns an RGBA color value for use when drawing on a truecolor image. Red, green, and blue are all in the range between 0 (off) and 255 (maximum). This macro should not be used with palette-based images. If you need to write code which is compatible with both palette-based and truecolor images, use gdImageColorResolve.

void gdTrueColorAlpha(int red, int green, int blue, int alpha) (MACRO)

gdTrueColorAlpha returns an RGBA color value for use when drawing on a truecolor image with alpha channel transparency. Red, green, and blue are all in the range between 0 (off) and 255 (maximum). Alpha is in the range between 0 (opaque) and 127 (fully transparent). This macro should not be used with palette-based images. If you need to write code which is compatible with both palette-based and truecolor images, use gdImageColorResolveAlpha.

Copying and resizing functions

void gdImageCopy(gdImagePtr dst, gdImagePtr src, int dstX, int dstY, int srcX, int srcY, int w, int h) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCopy is used to copy a rectangular portion of one image to another image. (For a way of stretching or shrinking the image in the process, see gdImageCopyResized.)

The dst argument is the destination image to which the region will be copied. The src argument is the source image from which the region is copied. The dstX and dstY arguments specify the point in the destination image to which the region will be copied. The srcX and srcY arguments specify the upper left corner of the region in the source image. The w and h arguments specify the width and height of the region.

When you copy a region from one location in an image to another location in the same image, gdImageCopy will perform as expected unless the regions overlap, in which case the result is unpredictable.

Important note on copying between images: since different images do not necessarily have the same color tables, pixels are not simply set to the same color index values to copy them. gdImageCopy will attempt to find an identical RGB value in the destination image for each pixel in the copied portion of the source image by invoking gdImageColorExact. If such a value is not found, gdImageCopy will attempt to allocate colors as needed using gdImageColorAllocate. If both of these methods fail, gdImageCopy will invoke gdImageColorClosest to find the color in the destination image which most closely approximates the color of the pixel being copied.

... Inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im_in;
gdImagePtr im_out;
int x, y;
FILE *in;
FILE *out;
/* Load a small png to tile the larger one with */
in = fopen("small.png", "rb");
im_in = gdImageCreateFromPng(in);
fclose(in);
/* Make the output image four times as large on both axes */
im_out = gdImageCreate(im_in->sx * 4, im_in->sy * 4);
/* Now tile the larger image using the smaller one */
for (y = 0; (y < 4); y++) {
  for (x = 0; (x < 4); x++) {
    gdImageCopy(im_out, im_in,
      x * im_in->sx, y * im_in->sy,
      0, 0,
      im_in->sx, im_in->sy);
  }
}
out = fopen("tiled.png", "wb");
gdImagePng(im_out, out);
fclose(out);
gdImageDestroy(im_in);
gdImageDestroy(im_out);

void gdImageCopyResized(gdImagePtr dst, gdImagePtr src, int dstX, int dstY, int srcX, int srcY, int destW, int destH, int srcW, int srcH) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCopyResized is used to copy a rectangular portion of one image to another image. The X and Y dimensions of the original region and the destination region can vary, resulting in stretching or shrinking of the region as appropriate. (For a simpler version of this function which does not deal with resizing, see gdImageCopy.)

The dst argument is the destination image to which the region will be copied. The src argument is the source image from which the region is copied. The dstX and dstY arguments specify the point in the destination image to which the region will be copied. The srcX and srcY arguments specify the upper left corner of the region in the source image. The dstW and dstH arguments specify the width and height of the destination region. The srcW and srcH arguments specify the width and height of the source region and can differ from the destination size, allowing a region to be scaled during the copying process.

When you copy a region from one location in an image to another location in the same image, gdImageCopy will perform as expected unless the regions overlap, in which case the result is unpredictable. If this presents a problem, create a scratch image in which to keep intermediate results.

Important note on copying between images: since images do not necessarily have the same color tables, pixels are not simply set to the same color index values to copy them. gdImageCopy will attempt to find an identical RGB value in the destination image for each pixel in the copied portion of the source image by invoking gdImageColorExact. If such a value is not found, gdImageCopy will attempt to allocate colors as needed using gdImageColorAllocate. If both of these methods fail, gdImageCopy will invoke gdImageColorClosest to find the color in the destination image which most closely approximates the color of the pixel being copied.

... Inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im_in;
gdImagePtr im_out;
int x, y;
FILE *in;
FILE *out;
/* Load a small png to expand in the larger one */
in = fopen("small.png", "rb");
im_in = gdImageCreateFromPng(in);
fclose(in);
/* Make the output image four times as large on both axes */
im_out = gdImageCreate(im_in->sx * 4, im_in->sy * 4);
/* Now copy the smaller image, but four times larger */
gdImageCopyResized(im_out, im_in, 0, 0, 0, 0,
  im_out->sx, im_out->sy,
  im_in->sx, im_in->sy);  
out = fopen("large.png", "wb");
gdImagePng(im_out, out);
fclose(out);
gdImageDestroy(im_in);
gdImageDestroy(im_out);

void gdImageCopyResampled(gdImagePtr dst, gdImagePtr src, int dstX, int dstY, int srcX, int srcY, int destW, int destH, int srcW, int srcH) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCopyResampled is used to copy a rectangular portion of one image to another image, smoothly interpolating pixel values so that, in particular, reducing the size of an image still retains a great deal of clarity. The X and Y dimensions of the original region and the destination region can vary, resulting in stretching or shrinking of the region as appropriate. (For a simpler version of this function which does not deal with resizing, see gdImageCopy. For a version which does not interpolate pixel values, see gdImageCopyResized.

Pixel values are only interpolated if the destination image is a truecolor image. Otherwise, gdImageCopyResized is automatically invoked.

The dst argument is the destination image to which the region will be copied. The src argument is the source image from which the region is copied. The dstX and dstY arguments specify the point in the destination image to which the region will be copied. The srcX and srcY arguments specify the upper left corner of the region in the source image. The dstW and dstH arguments specify the width and height of the destination region. The srcW and srcH arguments specify the width and height of the source region and can differ from the destination size, allowing a region to be scaled during the copying process.

When you copy a region from one location in an image to another location in the same image, gdImageCopy will perform as expected unless the regions overlap, in which case the result is unpredictable. If this presents a problem, create a scratch image in which to keep intermediate results.

Important note on copying between images: since images do not necessarily have the same color tables, pixels are not simply set to the same color index values to copy them. If the destination image is a palette image, gd will use the gdImageColorResolve function to determine the best color available.

... Inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im_in;
gdImagePtr im_out;
int x, y;
FILE *in;
FILE *out;
/* Load a large png to shrink in the smaller one */
in = fopen("large.png", "rb");
im_in = gdImageCreateFromPng(in);
fclose(in);
/* Make the output image four times as small on both axes. Use
  a true color image so that we can interpolate colors. */
im_out = gdImageCreateTrueColor(im_in->sx / 4, im_in->sy / 4);
/* Now copy the large image, but four times smaller */
gdImageCopyResampled(im_out, im_in, 0, 0, 0, 0,
  im_out->sx, im_out->sy,
  im_in->sx, im_in->sy);  
out = fopen("large.png", "wb");
gdImagePng(im_out, out);
fclose(out);
gdImageDestroy(im_in);
gdImageDestroy(im_out);

void gdImageCopyRotated(gdImagePtr dst, gdImagePtr src, double dstX, double dstY, int srcX, int srcY, int srcW, int srcH, int angle) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCopyRotated is used to copy a rectangular portion of one image to another image, or to another region of the same image. The srcX and srcY coordinates specify the upper left corner of the source area; however, the dstX and dstY coordinates specify the CENTER of the destination area. This important distinction is made because the rotated rectangle may may or may not be parallel to the X and Y axes. The destination coordinates may be floating point, as the center of the desired destination area may lie at the center of a pixel (0.5 pixels) rather than its upper left corner. The angle specified is an integer number of degrees, between 0 and 360, with 0 degrees causing no change, and counterclockwise rotation as the angle increases.

When you copy a region from one location in an image to another location in the same image, gdImageCopyRotated will perform as expected unless the regions overlap, in which case the result is unpredictable. If this presents a problem, create a scratch image in which to keep intermediate results.

Important note on copying between images: since palette-based images do not necessarily have the same color tables, pixels are not simply set to the same color index values to copy them. If the destination image is not a truecolor image, gdImageColorResolveAlpha is used to choose the destination pixel.

... Inside a function ...
gdImagePtr im_in;
gdImagePtr im_out;
int x, y;
int a;
FILE *in;
FILE *out;
/* Load a small png to rotate in the larger one */
in = fopen("small.png", "rb");
im_in = gdImageCreateFromPng(in);
fclose(in);
/* Make the output image four times as large on both axes */
im_out = gdImageCreate(im_in->sx * 4, im_in->sy * 4);
/* Now rotate the smaller image */
for (a = 0; (a < 360); a += 45) {
        double x = cos(a * .0174532925) * gdImageSX(im_out) / 2;
        double y = -sin(a * .0174532925) * gdImageSY(im_out) / 2;
  gdImageCopyRotated(im_out, im_in, 
                gdImageSX(im_out) / 2 + x, 
                gdImageSY(im_out) / 2 + y, 
    0, 0,
                gdImageSX(im_in),
                gdImageSY(im_in),
                a); 
}
out = fopen("large.png", "wb");
gdImagePng(im_out, out);
fclose(out);
gdImageDestroy(im_in);
gdImageDestroy(im_out);

void gdImageCopyMerge(gdImagePtr dst, gdImagePtr src, int dstX, int dstY, int srcX, int srcY, int w, int h, int pct) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCopyMerge is almost identical to gdImageCopy, except that it 'merges' the two images by an amount specified in the last parameter. If the last parameter is 100, then it will function identically to gdImageCopy - the source image replaces the pixels in the destination.

If, however, the pct parameter is less than 100, then the two images are merged. With pct = 0, no action is taken.

This feature is most useful to 'highlight' sections of an image by merging a solid color with pct = 50:

... Inside a function ...
gdImageCopyMerge(im_out, im_in, 100, 200, 0, 0, 30, 50, 50);

void gdImageCopyMergeGray(gdImagePtr dst, gdImagePtr src, int dstX, int dstY, int srcX, int srcY, int w, int h, int pct) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCopyMergeGray is almost identical to gdImageCopyMerge, except that when merging images it preserves the hue of the source by converting the destination pixels to grey scale before the copy operation.

... Inside a function ...
gdImageCopyMergeGray(im_out, im_in, 100, 200, 0, 0, 30, 50, 50);

void gdImagePaletteCopy(gdImagePtr dst, gdImagePtr src) (FUNCTION)

Copies a palette from one image to another, attempting to match the colors in the target image to the colors in the source palette.

void gdImageSquareToCircle(gdImagePtr im, int radius) (FUNCTION)

im MUST be square, but can have any size. Returns a new image of width and height radius * 2, in which the X axis of the original has been remapped to theta (angle) and the Y axis of the original has been remapped to rho (distance from center). This is known as a "polar coordinate transform." See also gdImageStringFTCircle, which uses this function internally.

void gdImageSharpen(gdImagePtr im, int pct) (FUNCTION)

Sharpens the specified image. pct is a sharpening percentage, and can be greater than 100. Silently does nothing to non-truecolor images. Silently does nothing for pct<0. Transparency/alpha channel are not altered.

Miscellaneous Functions

int gdImageCompare(gdImagePtr im1, gdImagePtr im2) (FUNCTION)

gdImageCompare returns a bitmap indicating if the two images are different. The members of the bitmap are defined in gd.h, but the most important is GD_CMP_IMAGE, which indicated that the images will actually appear different when displayed. Other, less important, differences relate to pallette entries. Any difference in the transparent colour is assumed to make images display differently, even if the transparent colour is not used.

... Inside a function ...
cmpMask = gdImageCompare(im1, im2);

gdImageInterlace(gdImagePtr im, int interlace) (FUNCTION)

gdImageInterlace is used to determine whether an image should be stored in a linear fashion, in which lines will appear on the display from first to last, or in an interlaced fashion, in which the image will "fade in" over several passes. By default, images are not interlaced. (When writing JPEG images, interlacing implies generating progressive JPEG files, which are represented as a series of scans of increasing quality. Noninterlaced gd images result in regular [sequential] JPEG data streams.)

A nonzero value for the interlace argument turns on interlace; a zero value turns it off. Note that interlace has no effect on other functions, and has no meaning unless you save the image in PNG or JPEG format; the gd and xbm formats do not support interlace.

When a PNG is loaded with gdImageCreateFromPng or a JPEG is loaded with gdImageCreateFromJpeg, interlace will be set according to the setting in the PNG or JPEG file.

Note that many PNG and JPEG viewers and web browsers do not support interlace or the incremental display of progressive JPEGs. However, the interlaced PNG or progressive JPEG should still display; it will simply appear all at once, just as other images do.

gdImagePtr im;
FILE *out;
/* ... Create or load the image... */

/* Now turn on interlace */
gdImageInterlace(im, 1);
/* And open an output file */
out = fopen("test.png", "wb");
/* And save the image  -- could also use gdImageJpeg */
gdImagePng(im, out);
fclose(out);
gdImageDestroy(im);

gdFree(void *ptr) (FUNCTION)

gdFree provides a reliable way to free memory allocated by functions such as gdImagePngPtr which return blocks of memory. Use of this function guarantees that the version of free() that is ultimately called will be intended for use with the version of malloc() that originally allocated the block.

Constants

gdAntiAliased (CONSTANT)

Used in place of a color when invoking a line-drawing function such as gdImageLine or gdImageRectangle. When gdAntiAliased is used as the color, the foreground color set with gdImageSetAntiAliased is used, with antialiasing mechanisms to minimize any "jagged" appearance. For more information, see gdImageSetAntiAliased.

gdBrushed (CONSTANT)

Used in place of a color when invoking a line-drawing function such as gdImageLine or gdImageRectangle. When gdBrushed is used as the color, the brush image set with gdImageSetBrush is drawn in place of each pixel of the line (the brush is usually larger than one pixel, creating the effect of a wide paintbrush). See also gdStyledBrushed for a way to draw broken lines with a series of distinct copies of an image.

gdMaxColors(CONSTANT)

The constant 256. This is the maximum number of colors in a palette-based PNG file according to the PNG standard, and is also the maximum number of colors in a palette-based gd image. This of course does not apply to truecolor images.

gdStyled (CONSTANT)

Used in place of a color when invoking a line-drawing function such as gdImageLine or gdImageRectangle. When gdStyled is used as the color, the colors of the pixels are drawn successively from the style that has been set with gdImageSetStyle. If the color of a pixel is equal to gdTransparent, that pixel is not altered. (This mechanism is completely unrelated to the "transparent color" of the image itself; see gdImageColorTransparent gdImageColorTransparent for that mechanism.) See also gdStyledBrushed.

gdStyledBrushed (CONSTANT)

Used in place of a color when invoking a line-drawing function such as gdImageLine or gdImageRectangle. When gdStyledBrushed is used as the color, the brush image set with gdImageSetBrush is drawn at each pixel of the line, providing that the style set with gdImageSetStyle contains a nonzero value (OR gdTransparent, which does not equal zero but is supported for consistency) for the current pixel. (Pixels are drawn successively from the style as the line is drawn, returning to the beginning when the available pixels in the style are exhausted.) Note that this differs from the behavior of gdStyled, in which the values in the style are used as actual pixel colors, except for gdTransparent.

gdDashSize (CONSTANT)

The length of a dash in a dashed line. Defined to be 4 for backwards compatibility with programs that use gdImageDashedLine. New programs should use gdImageSetStyle and call the standard gdImageLine function with the special "color" gdStyled or gdStyledBrushed.

gdTiled (CONSTANT)

Used in place of a normal color in gdImageFilledRectangle, gdImageFilledPolygon, gdImageFill, and gdImageFillToBorder. gdTiled selects a pixel from the tile image set with gdImageSetTile in such a way as to ensure that the filled area will be tiled with copies of the tile image. See the discussions of gdImageFill and gdImageFillToBorder for special restrictions regarding those functions.

gdTransparent (CONSTANT)

Used in place of a normal color in a style to be set with gdImageSetStyle. gdTransparent is not the transparent color index of the image; for that functionality please see gdImageColorTransparent.

About the additional .gd image file format

The program "pngtogd.c" is provided as a simple way of converting .png files to .gd format. I emphasize again that you will not need to use this format unless you have a need for high-speed loading of a few frequently-used images in your program.

About the .gd2 image file format

The program "pngtogd2.c" is provided as a simple way of converting .png files to .gd2 format.

About the gdIOCtx structure

typedef struct gdIOCtx {
        int     (*getC)(struct gdIOCtx*);
        int     (*getBuf)(struct gdIOCtx*, void*, int);

        void     (*putC)(struct gdIOCtx*, int);
        int     (*putBuf)(struct gdIOCtx*, const void*, int);

        int     (*seek)(struct gdIOCtx*, const int); /* Returns 1 on SUCCESS */
        long    (*tell)(struct gdIOCtx*); 

        void    (*free)(struct gdIOCtx*);

} gdIOCtx;

The <xxx>Ctx routines use the function pointers in the I/O context pointed to by gdIOCtx to perform all I/O. Examples of how to implement an I/O context can be found in io_file.c (which provides a wrapper for file routines), and io_dp.c (which implements in-memory storage).

It is not necessary to implement all functions in an I/O context if you know that it will only be used in limited cirsumstances. At the time of writing (Version 1.6.1, July 1999), the known requirements are:

All		Must have 'free',
Anything that reads from the context		Must have 'getC' and 'getBuf',
Anything that writes to the context		Must have 'putC' and 'putBuf'.
If gdCreateFromGd2Part is called		Must also have 'seek' and 'tell'. Note: seek must return 1 on SUCCESS and 0 on FAILURE.
If gdImageGd2 is called		Must also have 'seek' and 'tell'.

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