Draw text with custom font using ImageMagick and PHP

Question

I want to dynamically render text to an image with a custom font, preferably with the option to output directly or save to a file. And to automatically

Answer 1

Decided to skip the API and use the command-line interface instead.

convert -background lightblue -fill blue -font Arial -pointsize 72 label:Anthony png:-

This returns the raw PNG data, which we can then output to the browser. Replace png:- with the filename to save to a file instead.

Don't forget to use escapeshellarg if you are using user input as parameters here.

Answer 2

You should be able to use the annotateImage function of the Imagick class to duplicate that functionality.

Here's a straight up copy-paste from that documentation:

<?php
/* Create some objects */
$image = new Imagick();
$draw = new ImagickDraw();
$pixel = new ImagickPixel( 'gray' );

/* New image */
$image->newImage(800, 75, $pixel);

/* Black text */
$draw->setFillColor('black');

/* Font properties */
$draw->setFont('Bookman-DemiItalic');
$draw->setFontSize( 30 );

/* Create text */
$image->annotateImage($draw, 10, 45, 0, 
    'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog');

/* Give image a format */
$image->setImageFormat('png');

/* Output the image with headers */
header('Content-type: image/png');
echo $image;