In a new tutorial today from DevShed, they introduce you to one of the more powerful bits of PHP functionality - the graphics manipulation functions - and how to use them to create an image generator class in PHP5.

In simple terms, over the course of this brand new PHP series, which will be comprised of three friendly tutorials, I'll walk you through the development of an easy-to-follow PHP class that will have the ability to build dynamic text strings, which will be outputted straight to the browser in the form of image streams.

This part part of the series lays the foundation, creating the basic structure of the class and the buildImageStream and displayImage methods. This is then used in a sample use - creating images, white text on a black background.