If you want to spice up your imagettftext use and use custom fonts from dafont here is how to do it:

Choose your font from dafont in this example I choose Raitons font. Click download on the right of the page

Open up the downloaded zip file and drag the .ttf file into your image create php file directory (note i changed the font name from Raitons Demo.ttf to Raitons.ttf)

image.php is this:

<?php
function create_image($width, $height, $text)
{
$image = ImageCreate($width, $height);
$white = ImageColorAllocate($image, 255, 255, 255);//white
$grey = imagecolorallocate($image, 128, 128, 128);//grey
$black = imagecolorallocate($image, 0, 0, 0);//black
ImageFill($image, 0, 0, $white);
$font = 'Raitons.ttf';//make sure chosen font is in the directory!!
imagettftext($image, 36, 0, 96, 46, $grey, $font, $text);//text shadow
imagettftext($image, 36, 0, 95, 45, $black, $font, $text);//text
$save = "phpimage.png";//image will be save in this files directory as "phpimage.png"
imagepng($image, $save);
return "<img src='$save'>";
ImageDestroy($image);//Free memory
}
echo create_image(600, 200, 'Sample text for image');

This will generate an image with the custom text using the font Raitons. The image file will be called phpimage.png in your working directory that looks like this:

That is how to use custom or dafont fonts with imagettftext as you can see its simple and custom fonts look a lot better than the default ones!