http://www.boutell.com/gd/ gd 1.6.3 A graphics library for fast image creation HEY! READ THIS! gd 1.6.3 creates PNG images, not GIF images. This is a good thing. PNG is a more compact format, and full compression is available. Existing code will need modification to call gdImagePng instead of gdImageGif. Please do not ask us to send you the old GIF version of GD. Unisys holds a patent on the LZW compression algorithm, which is used in fully compressed GIF images. We are still investigating the legal issues surrounding various alternative means of producing a valid GIF file. gd 1.6.3 requires that the following libraries also be installed: libpng zlib Please read the documentation and install the required libraries. Do not send email asking why png.h is not found. See the requirements section for more information. Thank you! 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 file. This is particularly useful in World Wide Web applications, where .PNG is one 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. 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 1.6.3 incorporates most of the commonly requested features for an 8-bit 2D package. Support for scalable fonts, and truecolor images, JPEG and truecolor PNG is planned for version 2.0. What if I want to use another programming language? Perl gd can also be used from Perl, courtesy of Lincoln Stein's GD.pm library, which uses gd as the basis for a set of Perl 5.x classes. Not yet updated for gd 1.6.3. http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/ftp/pub/software/WWW/GD.html Tcl gd can be used from Tcl with John Ellson's Gdtclft dynamically loaded extension package. (Gdtclft2.0 or later is needed for gd-1.6.3 with PNG output.) http://www.tcltk.com/ftp/ellson/ Any Language There are, at the moment, at least three simple interpreters that perform gd operations. You can output the desired commands to a simple text file from whatever scripting language you prefer to use, then invoke the interpreter. These packages have not been updated to gd 1.6.3 as of this writing. http://s27w007.pswfs.gov/tgd/ tgd, by Bradley K. Sherman http://www.unimelb.edu.au/fly/fly.html fly, by Martin Gleeson What's new in version 1.6.3? Version 1.6.3 corrects a memory leak in gd_png.c. This leak caused a significant amount of memory to be allocated and not freed when writing a PNG image. What's new in version 1.6.2? Version 1.6.2 from John Ellson adds two new functions: 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? Version 1.6.1 incorporates superior PNG reading and writing code from Greg Roelofs, with minor modifications by Tom Boutell. Specifically, I altered his code to read non-palette images (converting them to palette images badly, by dithering them), and to tolerate palette images with types of transparency that gd doesn't actually support (it just ignores the advanced transparency features). Any bugs in this area are therefore my fault, not Greg's. 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? Version 1.6 features the following changes: 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.