Dealing with GD module from CPAN.

Works fine for me using ActiveState perl 5.10 and the perl GD module 2.44 with libgd 2.0.33, with the sample code included in the documentation for the perl GD module, included below (redirect to a file, or change code to open file):

use GD;

# create a new image
$im = new GD::Image(100,100);

# allocate some colors
$white = $im->colorAllocate(255,255,255);
$black = $im->colorAllocate(0,0,0);
$red = $im->colorAllocate(255,0,0);
$blue = $im->colorAllocate(0,0,255);

# make the background transparent and interlaced
$im->transparent($white);
$im->interlaced('true');

# Put a black frame around the picture
$im->rectangle(0,0,99,99,$black);

# Draw a blue oval
$im->arc(50,50,95,75,0,360,$blue);

# And fill it with red
$im->fill(50,50,$red);

# make sure we are writing to a binary stream
binmode STDOUT;

# Convert the image to PNG and print it on standard output
print $im->png;


Is it possible you are not setting binmode on whatever file handle you are writing to? On windows this is a must.

P.S. While the code may not have syntax mistakes, that says nothing about possible logic errors. Reducing the code to the minimum amount required to illustrate the problem and attaching that will probably yield more useful responses.

Since you are using ActivePerl's pre-compiled GD module, you should not need to install libgd separately; it is included in the ActiveState binary PPM of GD.

When printing a GD::Image object, you must use a method call to the desired image format, or you will output the object's string representation (its address) instead of the image.

Just change the next-to-last line from this:

print GIF $gif;

to this:

print GIF $gif->jpeg();