Dynamic Image Generation in Drupal: Leveraging the GD Library
Video Description
The GD library ships with PHP and gives developers a full toolkit for generating and manipulating images programmatically, with no third-party APIs or SaaS subscriptions required.
In this session, we'll start with the fundamentals of GD: creating canvases, working with colors, drawing text with TrueType fonts, layering images, and outputting results as PNG or JPEG. Then we'll bring it into Drupal by building a real-world custom module that generates dynamic Open Graph images on the fly, so every node gets a polished social media preview without manual uploads.
We'll cover practical integration patterns including custom routes and controllers, wiring image URLs into the Metatag module with tokens, caching strategies, auto-sizing text, and techniques like text shadows for polished output. We'll also explore other use cases: watermarks, placeholder images, badges, and simple charts.
Notes
I will base my presentation on a blog post I wrote here https://medium.com/@srd2725/on-the-fly-metatag-image-generation-in-drupal-734c072e1d90
Presentation will be slides with code samples.
About the Speaker
srdtwc
https://www.midcamp.org/events/2026/sessions/dynamic-image-generation-drupal-leveraging-gd-library
In this session, we'll start with the fundamentals of GD: creating canvases, working with colors, drawing text with TrueType fonts, layering images, and outputting results as PNG or JPEG. Then we'll bring it into Drupal by building a real-world custom module that generates dynamic Open Graph images on the fly, so every node gets a polished social media preview without manual uploads.
We'll cover practical integration patterns including custom routes and controllers, wiring image URLs into the Metatag module with tokens, caching strategies, auto-sizing text, and techniques like text shadows for polished output. We'll also explore other use cases: watermarks, placeholder images, badges, and simple charts.
Notes
I will base my presentation on a blog post I wrote here https://medium.com/@srd2725/on-the-fly-metatag-image-generation-in-drupal-734c072e1d90
Presentation will be slides with code samples.
About the Speaker
srdtwc
https://www.midcamp.org/events/2026/sessions/dynamic-image-generation-drupal-leveraging-gd-library