In this new article from DevShed today, there's a look at working with the GD libraries in PHP by doing some fun manipulation exercises (I love manipulation, don't you?)
Sometimes programming is work, but sometimes… it's fun. Today we're going to work on a fun programming project involving image manipulation. This project will require that PHP be installed with the GD library (available at http://www.boutell.com/gd/, or bundled along with PHP 4.3 and later).
This article, the first of two parts, describes a fun little project that will help you sharpen your image manipulation skills. The completed application takes an image and converts it to a string of text that resembles the original image. Brian Vaughn gets you started.
In this first part of the series, all they really do is help you get things set up - a working PHP intallation with GD integrated. They provide initial code for the manipulation class, but it doesn't do much of anything yet. I guess that'll have to wait for part two...