changing characters (text) to image (letter by letter) or..

[nezbie]

Hi

Does anyone know any good php scripts that would change text as image, letter by letter or create a new phrase using a predefined font. I'd need to use a non-standard font (not Arial, Verdana etc) to create page headers and other dynamic text for my page. I thought the best way was to convert the text as an image using this special font. Is this possible?

I'm not asking anyone to do the code for me. Just a hint or two, or a link to a script someone has made earlier

I've tried to search the web a little, but since my native language is not English, correct search terms are a mystery :)