GD Lib to save a image

I have a code snippet of the following

$code = generateCode($characters);
      /* font size will be 75% of the image height */
      $font_size = $height * 0.75;
      $image = imagecreate($width, $height) or die('Cannot initialize new GD image stream');
      /* set the colours */
      $background_color = imagecolorallocate($image, 255, 255, 255);
      $text_color = imagecolorallocate($image, 20, 40, 100);
      $noise_color = imagecolorallocate($image, 100, 120, 180);
      /* generate random dots in background */
      for( $i=0; $i<($width*$height)/3; $i++ ) {
         imagefilledellipse($image, mt_rand(0,$width), mt_rand(0,$height), 1, 1, $noise_color);
      }
      /* generate random lines in background */
      for( $i=0; $i<($width*$height)/150; $i++ ) {
         imageline(开发者_C百科$image, mt_rand(0,$width), mt_rand(0,$height), mt_rand(0,$width), mt_rand(0,$height), $noise_color);
      }
      /* create textbox and add text */
      $textbox = imagettfbbox($font_size, 0, $font, $code) or die('Error in imagettfbbox function');
      $x = ($width - $textbox[4])/2;
      $y = ($height - $textbox[5])/2;
      imagettftext($image, $font_size, 0, $x, $y, $text_color, $font , $code) or die('Error in imagettftext function');
      /* output captcha image to browser */
      header('Content-Type: image/jpeg');
      imagejpeg($image);
      imagedestroy($image);
      $_SESSION['security_code'] = $code;

I'm struggling to save the image, but am able to render it, is there a way to save the capcha image instead of redering it?

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yes You can, tip: second parameter, if not set or NULL, the raw image stream will be outputted directly.

hope that helps.

http://php.net/manual/en/function.imagepng.php

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Use output buffering:

ob_start();
imagepng(...); // or imagejpeg(...);
$img=ob_end_clean();

Since it's now saved in a variable, you can store the image in a database (without saving to file) or render it with:

header('Content-type: image/png');
echo $img;