What are the best practices for handling transparency in PNG images when working with PHP's GD library?

When working with PNG images in PHP's GD library, it's important to handle transparency correctly to ensure that the transparency is preserved in the final image. One common issue is that transparent areas may appear as black when the image is saved. To fix this, you can use the `imagecolortransparent()` function to set a specific color as transparent before saving the image.

// Load the PNG image
$source = imagecreatefrompng('image.png');

// Create a new true color image with the same dimensions
$dest = imagecreatetruecolor(imagesx($source), imagesy($source));

// Set the transparent color to white
$transparent = imagecolorallocate($dest, 255, 255, 255);
imagecolortransparent($dest, $transparent);

// Copy the source image to the destination image
imagecopy($dest, $source, 0, 0, 0, 0, imagesx($source), imagesy($source));

// Save the image with transparency intact
imagepng($dest, 'output.png');

// Clean up
imagedestroy($source);
imagedestroy($dest);