James Taylor wrote:

I think there is a question about whether swapping from inside PHP to ImageMagick and back is a good thing or not - why spawn a separate process to do essentially the same work?

Another possibility is:

1) Load image. 2) Create new image to store text in 3) Render text (make it vector based if possible) 4) Resize-text-image to being correct size/proportion 5) Merge text-image over image

The actual processing is slower than the spawning, so it's not particularly a problem, but I am moving towards using the Imagick PHP libraries which will bring the processing inside PHP rather than spawning a new process. Spawning a process has the advantage that I can experiment at the commandline first (and can seek advice from a wider range of people), but the options are pretty straightforward to convert between library and commandline. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG