Re: Random Pictures Using .pngs ... how?

[myocom]

GD can do this (and more). Here's a quick 'n' dirty example that will create a 100x100 pixel PNG and spew it to STDOUT (so make sure you redirect to a file in your shell).

use strict;
use GD;

my $im = new GD::Image(100,100);
my @colors; # Preallocate colors, since PNG has a limited number of co
+lors
for (0..255) {
  $colors[$_] = $im->colorAllocate(int(rand(256)),int(rand(256)),int(r
+and(256)));
}

for my $x (0..99) {
    for my $y (0..99) {
        $im->setPixel($x,$y,$colors[int(rand(255))]);
    }
}
binmode STDOUT;
print $im->png;

"One word of warning: if you meet a bunch of Perl programmers on the bus or something, don't look them in the eye. They've been known to try to convert the young into Perl monks." - Frank Willison

[tilly]

Before your print add:

print "Content-Type: image/png\n\n";

and your script is now a CGI script that can be put behind a webserver. There is now no need for a temporary file!

[bladx]

Thanks, myocom for the quick intro to the awesome GD module! It is a very useful module for me, and the documentation is very lengthy, however very useful.

Thanks tilly for showing me how to make this useful for CGI, since I tend to program in CGI more often than the shell usually.

I will be continuing to experiment with the GD module, and see if I can't get really good at utilizing this module for some really cool Perl artwork *hopefully*!

Andy Summers