Should I use the GD library in PHP to draw CAPTCHA images?

Question

Is PHP's GD library suitable for drawing images from scratch? Or would I be better off just importing an image and altering it...

Answer 1

Not sure it'll be possible to know how many people use one solution, or the other ;-)

But the most reasonnable answer would be, in your case, that choosing one solution over the other depends on your situation :

• If you have a base-image and just need to add a small portion of information, loading an existing image will probably be the simplest solution
• If you need to generate an image that's customized a lot, different for each one of your pages, going with a full-generation from scratch might be easier.

Answer 2

If you're not limited to GD, you may also want to look at the ImageMagick extension. This has a comparison :)

Answer 3

No, you defiantly should not write your own captcha. Please use re-capthca it is by far the most secure capthca ever made, and its free. If this doesn't work use one of the many (vulnerable) Capthca libraries that use gdlib.