Programming Web Graphics with Perl and GNU Softwar

Name

gif( ) — return the image in GIF format

Synopsis

GD::Image::gif

The gif( ) method will convert an image into the GIF format and return it. If your platform makes a distinction between text files and binary files, make sure that you are writing in binary mode by calling binmode( ) first. You can then write the image to the previously opened file:

open OUTFILE, ">beatniks.gif";          # Open the file for writing
binmode OUTFILE;                        # Make sure we're in binary mode
print OUTFILE $image->gif;              # Print GIF data to the file
close OUTFILE;

On Unix systems, you can pipe the image data to an image viewer, such as xv or the display utility that comes with ImageMagick:

open (DISPLAY, "| display ") ||         # Of course, you must have already
       die "Couldn't display image!";   # installed display on your system
binmode DISPLAY;                        
print DISPLAY $gif_data->gif;           # Pipe GIF data to image viewer
close DISPLAY;                          # Close the pipe