(PHP 4 >= 4.0.4, PHP 5)
imagecreatefromstring — Create a new image from the image stream in the string
$image
   )
   imagecreatefromstring() returns an image identifier
   representing the image obtained from the given image.
   These types will be automatically detected if your build of PHP supports 
   them: JPEG, PNG, GIF, WBMP, and GD2.
  
imageA string containing the image data.
   An image resource will be returned on success. FALSE is returned if
   the image type is unsupported, the data is not in a recognised format,
   or the image is corrupt and cannot be loaded.
  
Example #1 imagecreatefromstring() example
<?php
$data = 'iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABwAAAASCAMAAAB/2U7WAAAABl'
       . 'BMVEUAAAD///+l2Z/dAAAASUlEQVR4XqWQUQoAIAxC2/0vXZDr'
       . 'EX4IJTRkb7lobNUStXsB0jIXIAMSsQnWlsV+wULF4Avk9fLq2r'
       . '8a5HSE35Q3eO2XP1A1wQkZSgETvDtKdQAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==';
$data = base64_decode($data);
$im = imagecreatefromstring($data);
if ($im !== false) {
    header('Content-Type: image/png');
    imagepng($im);
    imagedestroy($im);
}
else {
    echo 'An error occurred.';
}
?>
The above example will output something similar to:
