Editing Portal:Graphics Programming (section)

=== Early graphics and the web era ===

Perl became important to graphics programming during the early dynamic web era. In the 1990s and early 2000s, many websites used CGI scripts to generate or manipulate images on demand. Perl was already common for CGI programming, so it naturally became a language for server-side graphics tasks.

Common uses included:

* creating counters and badges;
* generating charts from database values;
* resizing uploaded images;
* making thumbnails;
* converting image formats;
* watermarking images;
* drawing maps, diagrams, or buttons;
* creating CAPTCHA-like images;
* adding text labels to images;
* preparing images for web galleries;
* generating dynamic graphics from user input.

This was an important historical role. Before browser-side JavaScript graphics became dominant, a great deal of dynamic image generation happened on the server. Perl, CGI, GD, and ImageMagick were a natural combination for that world.