How to convert text to images on the fly?

Question

I have seen in a couple of cases like:

1. Facebook Profile: The E-mail address comes as a jpeg pic and not as text
2. Google Forms Summary: Different Sized, Different Coloured Interactive Barcharts are made on the fly using the data you have.

How does it happen? What do I do?

Answer 1

Using gd or other such libraries (or libraries built on top of gd).

Answer 2

The PHP GD extension allows text to be overlaid on an image.

In fact, you don't need an image in the first place, you can generate an image containing just the text.

I've used it for buttons.

Answer 3

Another option: try imagick

Answer 4

I believe libGD is one of the most popular alternatives for generating images (and it has bindings for most languages used in web development).

See the documentation on PHP.net. I guess you are especially interested in imagettftext.