NYCPHP Meetup

[R. Mariotti]

Fellow PHP'ers;

As a developer, most times for a professional site the graphical 
components might be conveniently delivered by the design person.  This 
makes for very easy reference and literally plug-in.

However, like today, there is often the occasion where someone desires a 
change in some of the text that is already part of an image.   The 
technique I usually use is to make a copy of the image then use gimp to 
cut-out the undesired portion then add the new text to the image and 
move it around finally flattening it, saving it then uploading to the 
site.  Most times it works reasonably well (sort of!)

But, the clarity and precision of these resulting images are certainly 
not up to the quality that the original displayed.  I don't know the 
real reason because I'm not a graphics designer/artist.  It appears that 
the fonts, even though anti-aliased, are not as sharp as the original.

So, what other techniques do most of you use to accomplish the same? 
Surely not everyone has an in-house graphics artist.  I know I never 
had.  What programs and/or techniques are customarily used to accomplish 
this feat?

While this is not entirely a php question, it certainly is php developer 
related so that's why I though of posting to this list.

Thank you all.

B