hello there,
i made a function to create a gradient image.

description:
gradient(int image_width, int image_height, 
int start_red, int start_green, int start_blue, 
int end_red, int end_green, int end_blue, 
bool vertical)

function:
<?php
function gradient($image_width, $image_height,$c1_r, $c1_g, $c1_b, $c2_r, $c2_g, $c2_b, $vertical=false)
{
// first: lets type cast;
$image_width = (integer)$image_width;
$image_height = (integer)$image_height;
$c1_r = (integer)$c1_r;
$c1_g = (integer)$c1_g;
$c1_b = (integer)$c1_b;
$c2_r = (integer)$c2_r;
$c2_g = (integer)$c2_g;
$c2_b = (integer)$c2_b;
$vertical = (bool)$vertical;

// create a image
$image  = imagecreatetruecolor($image_width, $image_height); 

// make the gradient
for($i=0; $i<$image_height; $i++) 
{ 
$color_r = floor($i * ($c2_r-$c1_r) / $image_height)+$c1_r;
$color_g = floor($i * ($c2_g-$c1_g) / $image_height)+$c1_g;
$color_b = floor($i * ($c2_b-$c1_b) / $image_height)+$c1_b;

$color = ImageColorAllocate($image, $color_r, $color_g, $color_b);
imageline($image, 0, $i, $image_width, $i, $color);
} 

# Prints out all the figures and picture and frees memory 
header('Content-type: image/png'); 

if($vertical){$image = imagerotate($image, 90, 0);}
ImagePNG($image); 
imagedestroy($image); 
}
?>

When using GD, please make sure of the following things:

1. The file that is used to manipulate images is saved as ANSI format and not UTF-8
2. There is no space in front of the opening tag <?php

You know, maybe this goes without saying, but I thought I would drop a note in here.  When developing code to resize images, it is best not to use GD.  When using the current GD methodologies, you are reading content from an image and manipulating it.  By then writing that content to a brand new file, you are losing the EXIF data.

For purposes when you want to retain EXIF data, it is recommended that you compile in and use the PECL Imagick extension.  It has great resizing methods built right in and the EXIF data is retained.

In case your script is using output-buffering-functions somewhere, then you have to clear the buffer first ( with ob_clear() ), before outputting an image with a function like imagepng(). 

And you should make sure that no buffer will get send after outputing an image by using the ob_end_flush()-function.

Furthermore you should check if a buffer has already been flushed somewhere before. This can be done using the headers_sent()-function.

Here is the full solution:

<?php
if(headers_sent()){
    die('Headers have been send somewhere within my script');
}

ob_clean(); //Clears the buffer

header('Content-type: image/png');
imagepng($img, NULL, 0,  NULL);

ob_end_flush(); //Now we send the header and image plus we make sure that nothing will get send from now on (including possible shutdown-functions and __destruct()-methods) till the end of page-execution
?>

I have been looking to send the output from GD to a text string without proxying via a file or to a browser.

I have come up with a solution.

This code buffers the output between the ob_start() and ob_end() functions into ob_get_contents()

See the example below

<?php
// Create a test source image for this example
$im = imagecreatetruecolor(300, 50);
$text_color = imagecolorallocate($im, 233, 14, 91);
imagestring($im, 1, 5, 5,  'A Simple Text String', $text_color);

// start buffering
ob_start();
// output jpeg (or any other chosen) format & quality
imagejpeg($im, NULL, 85);
// capture output to string
$contents = ob_get_contents();
// end capture
ob_end_clean();

// be tidy; free up memory
imagedestroy($im);

// lastly (for the example) we are writing the string to a file
$fh = fopen("./temp/img.jpg", "a+" );
    fwrite( $fh, $contents );
fclose( $fh );
?> 

Enjoy!
Ashley