PHP - imagettftext not working and GD installed

Question

It's being long hours that I'm still looking for answer to this problem.. All the solutions I find are around catching the font name but I am pretty sure this isn't my problem.

It looks like GD is installed

array(11) {
  ["GD Version"]=>
  string(27) "bundled (**2.0.34 compatible**)"
  ["FreeType Support"]=>
  bool(false)
  ["T1Lib Support"]=>
  bool(false)
  ["GIF Read Support"]=>
  bool(true)
  ["GIF Create Support"]=>
  bool(true)
  ["JPEG Support"]=>
  bool(true)
  ["PNG Support"]=>
  bool(true)
  ["WBMP Support"]=>
  bool(true)
  ["XPM Support"]=>
  bool(true)
  ["XBM Support"]=>
  bool(true)
  ["JIS-mapped Japanese Font Support"]=>
  bool(false)
}

Above you can see my GD support. My PHP version is 5.3 and I'm running on Linux.

I have tried few different code examples from different websites and none works. ImageString does work for me but I need to get imagettftext to work..

This is the last code I have tried now-

<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);

// Set the content-type
header('Content-Type: image/png');

// Create the image
$im = imagecreatetruecolor(400, 100) or die("Can't create image!");

// Create some colors
$white = imagecolorallocate($im, 255, 255, 255);
$grey = imagecolorallocate($im, 128, 128, 128);
$black = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 0, 0);
imagefilledrectangle($im, 0, 0, 399, 29, $white);

// The text to draw
$text = 'Testing';
// Replace path by your own font path
$font = 'arial.ttf';

// Add some shadow to the text
imagettftext($im, 20, 0, 11, 21, $grey, 'arial.ttf', $text);

// Add the text
imagettftext($im, 20, 0, 10, 20, $black, 'arial.ttf', $text);

// Using imagepng() results in clearer text compared with imagejpeg()
imagepng($im);
imagedestroy($im);
?>

Result: http://www.7679679.com/app/test-ansi.php

If you set header... just before imagepng, what errormsg do you get? — michi, Feb 21 '13 at 10:40
Does php give you any error/notice? What does `imagettftext` function return? It should returns array of points or false on error. try `$text_result = imagettftext(...); if($text_result===false){echo("ERROR");}else print_r($text_result);`. Another thing, when you are filling your newly created image, you left one pixel on height and filled only 29 pixels of 100 on width, is that on purpose? — Buksy, Feb 21 '13 at 10:45
please consider to accept an answer (click tick mark on the left) if it actually answered your question — michi, Apr 14 '13 at 13:01

score 20 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 21 '13 at 11:52

20

Had the same problem, with FreeType installed, solution was

 $font = "./Arial.ttf"; // <--- put ./ in front of filename

answered Feb 21 '13 at 11:52

michi

6,486
4
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1

Worked for me! Lol! Can you please explain in detail why this works? – p01ymath Jul 14 '17 at 01:57
sorry, I have no idea of why this is so! – michi Jul 14 '17 at 07:03
worked! - but really weird, would also like to know why this is happening? – Daniel Resch Mar 11 '20 at 14:32
1

I even had to add realpath('./Arial.ttf') – Gerfried Jun 10 '20 at 23:02
defined('ROOT_PATH') || define('ROOT_PATH', realpath(dirname(__FILE__) . '')); $font_path = ROOT_PATH.'/fonts/arial-italic.ttf'; – Kamlesh Sep 27 '20 at 07:45

score 8 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 21 '13 at 10:40

Notice you don't have Free Type installed:

["FreeType Support"]=>
  bool(false)

This function requires both the GD library and the » FreeType library.

You will need to install Free Type library before you can use this function.

try installing these package:s freetype, freetype-devel

If you compiled PHP you can make sure you added enabled freetype during compile time:

--with-freetype-dir=/usr/include/freetype2/ --with-freetype

Or if you using something such as YUM or APT-GET it should be really simple to install those libraries, and a quick search ob google with get you started.

Requirement for Freetype support is documented in PHP manual, see http://php.net/manual/en/function.imagettftext.php and http://php.net/manual/en/function.imagettfbbox.php — dregad, Apr 28 '17 at 09:11

score 7 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 08 '15 at 04:21

7

Well i also got problem around

$font='arial.tff';

I think you should provide absolute path to the $font like

$font="c:/windows/fonts/arial.ttf";

i assume you are a windows user. and remove

header('Content-Type:image/png');

to get the real error

edited Dec 08 '15 at 04:21

Jobin

7,778
1
29
50

answered Mar 15 '15 at 07:22

Veshraj Joshi

3,128
2
20
35

2

adding local path might not be a perfect solution maybe use getcwd() + file name. – Damiani May 12 '19 at 08:24
@Damiani you are absolutely correct, but this path is for the font installed in OS, I will update the answer. Thanks for valuable suggestion – Veshraj Joshi May 13 '19 at 02:36

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 12 '19 at 14:20

3

I solved this problem with this solution:

$fontfile= __DIR__.'/Fontname.ttf';

answered Jun 12 '19 at 14:20

izmir_LEE

109
1
2

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 03 '14 at 10:14

Andrew is right, the php manual for imagettftext states FreeType is required to use imagettftext, imagettfbox, and others. Most people the GD devel package will install FreeType automatically:

Fedora/Redhat:

yum install gd gd-devel php-gd

Debian/Ubuntu:

apt-get install php5-gd libgd2-xpm libgd2-xpm-dev

This error was probably in your logs:

PHP Fatal error:  Call to undefined function imageTTFText()

PHP - imagettftext not working and GD installed

5 Answers5

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