Legacy ImageMagick Discussions Archive

I am using php 7.0.19 and ImageMagick 6.9.6-4 on a FreeBSD 11.0 server. I use imagemagick for quite a few things, but I am just getting started with using it to overlay text on top of my images. The problem I'm having is that any time I try to use the annotateImage functionality an error is thrown that simply says 'Unable to annotate image.'

I have looked through quite a few questions related to annotateImage and I have checked the docs to see if I could resolve the issue on my own, but I'm stuck. On other annotateImage questions I have seen that some people have trouble due to not having a specific font installed, and that may be my problem as well, but I have tried placing a font file (the ttf file) in the same directory as my script and I am still having the same issue.

Running convert -list font returns an empty result, indicating that there are no fonts that imagemagick has direct/default access to; however, I was thinking that by including the font file in the same directory as my script I could make it work anyway. Perhaps this is a mistaken assumption?

Here is the code I am using for my test:

Code: Select all

$imagick = new Imagick('originalImage.jpg');
$draw = new ImagickDraw();
$draw->setFillColor('#ffffff');
$draw->setFont('/file/location/myfont.ttf');
$draw->setFontSize(20);
$imagick->annotateImage($draw, 20, 100, 0, 'The quick fox jumps over the lazy dog');
$imagick->drawImage($draw);
$imagick->writeImage('finalImage.jpg');

I have also tried other example scripts that don't require an original image, and received the same error. For example, this script produces the same error:

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$image = new Imagick();
$draw = new ImagickDraw();
$pixel = new ImagickPixel( 'gray' );
$image->newImage(800, 75, $pixel);
$draw->setFillColor('black');
$draw->setFont('/file/location/myfont.ttf');
$draw->setFontSize( 30 );
$image->annotateImage($draw, 10, 45, 0, 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog');
$image->setImageFormat('png');
header('Content-type: image/png');
echo $image;

With these simple tests I was expecting to add 'The quick fox jumps over the lazy dog' to an image, but instead an exception is thrown and the error message simply says: Unable to annotate image.

Any ideas or suggestions on how I can resolve the error?

Thank you!

This works fine for me. The image lena.png and the font file arial.ttf are both in the same directory as my php file

Code: Select all

<?php
$imagick = new Imagick('lena.png');
$draw = new ImagickDraw();
$draw->setFillColor('#ffffff');
$draw->setFont('arial.ttf');
$draw->setFontSize(20);
$imagick->annotateImage($draw, 20, 100, 0, 'The quick fox jumps over the lazy dog');
$imagick->drawImage($draw);
$imagick->writeImage('lena_text.jpg');
?>

I suspect that you may not have a good Imagick install or your ImageMagick version 6 or 7 is incompatible with your PHP Imagick or perhaps you do not have the freetype delegate library installed.

What do you get from

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<?php
echo "<pre>";
system("type -a convert");  
echo "</pre>";
?>

and from

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<?php
exec("convert -version",$out,$returnval);
foreach($out as $text)
{echo "$text<br>";}
?>

Thanks for trying to help out with this. The code block gives me:

convert is /usr/local/bin/convert

The second gives me:

Version: ImageMagick 6.9.6-4 Q16 amd64 2017-04-04 http://www.imagemagick.org
Copyright: Copyright (C) 1999-2016 ImageMagick Studio LLC
License: http://www.imagemagick.org/script/license.php
Features: Cipher DPC Modules OpenMP
Delegates (built-in): bzlib fontconfig jbig jng jp2 jpeg lcms ltdl lzma png webp xml zlib

Your ImageMagick is missing freetype delegate that is needed to render text from fonts. See https://www.freetype.org. How did you install ImageMagick? Where did it come from?

I didn't install it myself, so I'm not sure where it came from (the person that takes care of our servers installed it).

Should I just ask them to update it and include the freetype delegate? It sounds like that may be what I need to do.

Thank you again for your help. I've spent several hours across the past week looking for potential solutions, and this gives me a good idea of how to start working on this from here.

Yes, get your IT people to either install the freetype delegate into ImageMagick or upgrade ImageMagick with the delegate included. ImageMagick 6.9.6-4 is rather old, though on Linux servers the date (2017-04-04) of the patch is more important. So your version is about 2 years old if properly patched.

Sounds good. Thanks!

Legacy ImageMagick Discussions Archive

Can you help with an 'Unable to annotate image' error?

Can you help with an 'Unable to annotate image' error?

Re: Can you help with an 'Unable to annotate image' error?

Re: Can you help with an 'Unable to annotate image' error?

Re: Can you help with an 'Unable to annotate image' error?

Re: Can you help with an 'Unable to annotate image' error?

Re: Can you help with an 'Unable to annotate image' error?

Re: Can you help with an 'Unable to annotate image' error?