in reply to GD and creating a Banner

The problem is that the x,y you supply is for the bottom left corner of the text. By supplying the origin, you are drawing the text above the top line of your image. Substitute the following and you'll see the text. 


$im->stringFT(
    $blue, "/home/development/archivesystem/ARLRDBD.TTF", 
    12.0, 0.0, 0, 45, "kokomo"
) or die "writing: $!";

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Also, the reason you get a white image is because for palette-based images (non-truecolor. Ie. The default), the first color allocated is automatically used as the background color.

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