How to give border to text in PHP GD library

Use following function to add border to text

You can check the example output here http://wmh.github.io/hunbook/examples/gd-imagettftext.html

function imagettfstroketext(&$image, $size, $angle, $x, $y, &$textcolor, &$strokecolor, $fontfile, $text, $px) {
    for($c1 = ($x-abs($px)); $c1 <= ($x+abs($px)); $c1++)
        for($c2 = ($y-abs($px)); $c2 <= ($y+abs($px)); $c2++)
            $bg = imagettftext($image, $size, $angle, $c1, $c2, $strokecolor, $fontfile, $text);
   return imagettftext($image, $size, $angle, $x, $y, $textcolor, $fontfile, $text);
}

You can use stil/gd-text class library. Code example:

<?php
require __DIR__.'/../vendor/autoload.php';

use GDText\Box;
use GDText\Color;

$im = imagecreatetruecolor(500, 500);
$backgroundColor = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 18, 64);
imagefill($im, 0, 0, $backgroundColor);

$box = new Box($im);
$box->setFontFace(__DIR__.'/Elevant bold.ttf'); // http://www.dafont.com/elevant-by-pelash.font
$box->setFontSize(150);
$box->setFontColor(new Color(255, 255, 255));
$box->setBox(20, 20, 460, 460);
$box->setTextAlign('center', 'center');

$box->setStrokeColor(new Color(255, 75, 140)); // Set stroke color
$box->setStrokeSize(3); // Stroke size in pixels

$box->draw("Elevant"); // Text to draw

header("Content-type: image/png;");
imagepng($im, null, 9, PNG_ALL_FILTERS);

Demonstration:

// http://www.johnciacia.com/2010/01/04/using-php-and-gd-to-add-border-to-text/
 function imagettfstroketext(&$image, $size, $angle, $x, $y, &$textcolor, &$strokecolor, $fontfile, $text, $px) {
for($c1 = ($x-abs($px)); $c1 <= ($x+abs($px)); $c1++)
    for($c2 = ($y-abs($px)); $c2 <= ($y+abs($px)); $c2++)
        $bg = imagettftext($image, $size, $angle, $c1, $c2, $strokecolor, $fontfile, $text);
    return imagettftext($image, $size, $angle, $x, $y, $textcolor, $fontfile, $text);
}

$font_color = imagecolorallocate($im, 255, 255, 255);
$stroke_color = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 0, 0);
imagettfstroketext($im, 60, 10, 300, 130, $font_color, $stroke_color, "wqy-  microhei.ttc", "简体繁體", 2);