What are the best practices for incorporating PHP to generate and display images on a website?

When incorporating PHP to generate and display images on a website, it is important to follow best practices to ensure optimal performance and security. One common approach is to use the GD library in PHP, which provides functions for creating and manipulating images. By using GD functions, you can dynamically generate images based on user input or other data, and then display them on your website.

<?php
// Create a blank image with specified width and height
$image = imagecreatetruecolor(200, 200);

// Set the background color of the image
$bg_color = imagecolorallocate($image, 255, 255, 255);
imagefill($image, 0, 0, $bg_color);

// Set the text color
$text_color = imagecolorallocate($image, 0, 0, 0);

// Add text to the image
$text = "Hello, World!";
imagettftext($image, 20, 0, 50, 100, $text_color, 'arial.ttf', $text);

// Output the image to the browser
header('Content-type: image/png');
imagepng($image);

// Free up memory
imagedestroy($image);
?>