When I was looking over the entries for this past International PHP Conference, I missed something mentioned over on John Coggeshall's weblog about a new graphics library that was introduced for PHP5 - PIMP.

According to John's entry and this PDF file, PIMP is a replacement for the GD libraries, and includes such features as:

• Vector Graphics,
• Filters,
• outlined fonts,
• more than 20 blending methods,
• plugin support,
• and much, much more...

Sounds like this is more than just the next step in evolution for PHP graphics manipulation. GD is a nice library, don't get me wrong, but the features and promises that PIMP seem to offer are a major leap above anything seen in PHP today. And, of course, good news for all: He promises to be commiting the source into the wild within the week, after making some changes based on suggestions he gathered at the conference.