Add text to an image with PHP

We released an open source PHP library this week. It's called Image with Text and, true to its name, it makes it super easy for you to add text to images with PHP.

Why?

It's not often we need to add text to an image, but occasionally a client approaches us with a project idea that requires it. For example, we recently built an application that lets friends and family deliver customized e-cards to hospital patients. Each card can be customized with a title, a message, and the name of the sender. The customized card is generated with our Image with Text library, then emailed either to the patient or the nurses desk for printing and hand-delivery.

And memes. Those, too!

Typography

Our Image with Text PHP library allows you to add styled text to an image. You can control each text block's typography, including:

• Alignment
• Color
• Line Height
• Size

You can use custom fonts, too! Just download a TTF or OTF font (appropriately licensed, of course) and then set the text block's font property to the relative or absolute path of the font file. Both Google Fonts and TypeKit are great places to find fonts.

Each text block is assigned exact coordinates to position it on top of the source image. If the text is left or center aligned, the X and Y coordinates are relative to the top left of the source image; if the text is right aligned, the X and Y coordinates are relative to the top right of the source image.

Flow Control

A text block is assigned a maximum character width and a maximum number of lines. The character width controls when the text block's text will break to a new line. If the text exceeds the available lines, an exception is thrown. You define the maximum number of lines and maximum number of characters per line when you create a text block, like this:

<?php
$text = new \NMC\ImageWithText\Text('Your text', 3, 25);

The second argument is the maximum number of lines, and the third argument is the maximum number of characters per line. Both of these are optional, and they default to 1 line and 80 characters, respectively.

Example

Here's a working example that puts everything together! You'll see that we create an image, add two blocks of text to the image, and render the image with text to a new file on disk.

<?php
// Enable Composer autoloading
require '../vendor/autoload.php';

// Create image
$image = new \NMC\ImageWithText\Image('source.jpg');

// Add text to image
$text1 = new \NMC\ImageWithText\Text('Thanks for using our image text PHP library!', 3, 25);
$text1->align = 'left';
$text1->color = 'FFFFFF';
$text1->font = 'fonts/Ubuntu-Medium.ttf';
$text1->lineHeight = 36;
$text1->size = 24;
$text1->startX = 40;
$text1->startY = 40;
$image->addText($text1);

// Add more text to image
$text2 = new \NMC\ImageWithText\Text('No, really, thanks!', 1, 30);
$text2->align = 'left';
$text2->color = '000000';
$text2->font = 'fonts/Ubuntu-Medium.ttf';
$text2->lineHeight = 20;
$text2->size = 14;
$text2->startX = 40;
$text2->startY = 140;
$image->addText($text2);

// Render image
$image->render('destination.jpg');

This code will produce this image:

Installation

We recommend you install our Image with Text PHP library with Composer. Update your project's composer.json file with:

{
    "require": {
        "nmcteam/image-with-text": "~2.0"
    }
}

Then run composer install.

Contribute

Our Image with Text PHP library is open source and released with the MIT Public License. Please helps us make it even better! You can contribute on GitHub here: