command line image editor or putting photoshop on server?

[meghanetpulse7]

So, i saw these websites which create graphically rich text. You put simple text , hit "start" and sysem generate completely new text with different colors. Something qhich require photoshop tobe used. I want to create a website around this same concept.
I looked into some options and imagemagick came as solution.

1) is there any other solution for this?

2) my coder say imagemagick is very very complex system.

3)can we put photoshop on server and run it for users? I am sure, this will have some very bad license issues.

Any suggestion on this?

Thanks

[diafol]

What's the point of the output? Plain text, image?
What's the input - plain text, image?

[meghanetpulse7]

output will be like

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/405/33496400.png/

input will be plain text

[diafol]

You can use the GD library (already in php) to create something like this, but it might be messy.
I assume you'll have a set of templates that get the text treatment on top of them?

[meghanetpulse7]

yeah, i have templates. But right now, i do them on photoshop. change text on text layer in photoshop.

[diafol]

I see. I know for a fact you can't/shouldn't run PS on the server. Anyway, I assume you've got your templates in png format?

I'm no expert with GD, but I remember creating a png with a raster image and free text once. There was a bit of cuffuffle with fonts, but I remember that I did get it to work.

Anyway, are you looking for something like DaniWeb badges (see your profile page at the bottom).

If so, I have no idea how these are produced.

I wonder if the url is a rewrite for a script that produces it on the fly? Ask Dani in the community forums.

Anyway, here's a link for GD text->img: http://scriptplayground.com/tutorials/php/Text-On-Image/