One of the things that draws people to PHP is the fact that there are libraries out there that will allow them to work with images. Sure, the feature isn't anything new or startling, and other languages allow you to alter images - but PHP has become one of the more popular for doing so. The only problem is, when people get into the language expecting it to be a simple matter of a few lines, they find out it takes a bit more work, and can be confusing. Well, this article from SitePoint has a few ideas to help you get into GD.

They start off with showing you how to make thumbnails from your images. This is probably the most asked GD question that I've ever seen - and now there's a great answer!

They continue on and show you how to add things to that thumbnail image, including a shadowed bevel, a spiders web, and a donut (mmm, donut...). Unfortunately, the owners of the GIF copyright decided to pull the plug on it for normal use, and the GD developers agreed to remove it, so you can't make GIF images with the latest releases, but you can use them to start from (I think).

Thanks to Ewald for the pointer....