The GD Graphics Library is a library by Thomas Boutell and others for dynamically manipulating images. Its native programming language is ANSI C, but it has interfaces for many other programming languages. It can create GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs, and WBMPs. Support for drawing GIFs was dropped in 1999 when Unisys revoked the royalty-free license granted to non-commercial software projects for the LZW compression method used by GIFs. When the Unisys patent expired worldwide on July 7, 2004, GIF support was subsequently re-enabled. For images in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Images. ... Computer code (HTML with JavaScript) in a tool that uses syntax highlighting (colors) to help the developer see the purpose of each piece of code. ... The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is a private, non-profit standards organization that produces industrial standards in the United States. ... The C Programming Language, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the original edition that served for many years as an informal specification of the language The C programming language is a standardized imperative computer programming language developed in the early 1970s by Dennis Ritchie for use on the Unix operating system. ... A rotating globe in GIF format. ... A photo of a flower compressed with successively lossier compression ratios from left to right. ... For other uses, see PNG (disambiguation). ... Wireless Application Protocol Bitmap Format (shortened to Wireless Bitmap and with file extension . ... It has been suggested that Licensing (strategic alliance) be merged into this article or section. ... LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welch) is an implementation of a lossless data compression algorithm created by Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv. ... A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to a person for a fixed period of time in exchange for the regulated, public disclosure of certain details of a device, method, process or composition of matter (substance) (known as an invention) which is new, inventive, and... July 7 is the 188th day of the year (189th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 177 days remaining. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

GD originally stood for "GIF Draw". However, since the revoking of the Unisys license, it has informally stood for "Graphics Draw".

GD can create images composed of lines, arcs, text (using program-selected fonts), other images, and multiple colors. Version 2.0 adds support for truecolor images, alpha channels, resampling (for smooth resizing of truecolor images), and many other features. Truecolor (also spelled Truecolour; called Millions on a Macintosh) graphics is a method of storing image information in a computers memory such that each pixel is represented by three or more bytes. ... In computer graphics, alpha compositing is often useful to render image elements in separate passes, and then combine the resulting multiple 2D images into a single, final image in a process called compositing. ...

GD supports numerous programming languages including C, PHP, Perl, O'Caml, Tcl, Lua, Pascal, and REXX. There is also a tool called fly which allows access to GD from any language through a command-line program. The C Programming Language, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the original edition that served for many years as an informal specification of the language The C programming language is a standardized imperative computer programming language developed in the early 1970s by Dennis Ritchie for use on the Unix operating system. ... PHP is a scripted programming language that can be used to create websites. ... Perl, also Practical Extraction and Report Language (a backronym, see below) is an interpreted procedural programming language designed by Larry Wall. ... Objective Caml (OCaml) is a general-purpose programming language descended from the ML family, created by Xavier Leroy, Jérôme Vouillon, Damien Doligez, Didier Rémy and others in 1996. ... // Tcl (originally from Tool Command Language, but nonetheless conventionally rendered as Tcl rather than TCL; and pronounced like tickle) is a scripting language created by John Ousterhout that is generally thought to be easy to learn, but powerful in competent hands. ... The Lua (pronounced LOO-ah, or in IPA) programming language is a lightweight, reflective, imperative and procedural language, designed as a scripting language with extensible semantics as a primary goal. ... Pascal is an imperative computer programming language, developed in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a language particularly suitable for structured programming. ... REXX (REstructured eXtended eXecutor) is an interpreted programming language which was developed at IBM. It is a structured high-level programming language which was designed to be both easy to learn and easy to read. ...

GD is extensively used with PHP, where a modified version supporting additional features is included by default as of PHP 4.3 and was an option before that.

See also

• ImageMagick
• Netpbm

ImageMagick is a free software suite for the creation, modification and display of bitmap images. ... Netpbm is a package of graphics programs and a programming library, used mainly in the Unix world. ...

External links

• GD Graphics Library
• Image Functions (PHP), support in PHP
• Live example of php`s GD library, web generation of images with PHP installed server.

PHP is a scripted programming language that can be used to create websites. ... PHP is a scripted programming language that can be used to create websites. ...

Tutorials

• Creating Image with GD Library An example of image generation from a png image on server and adding .ttf fonts