Since people are testing php 5.2 in the CentOS repo - here's a bug I found in my own build of 5.2 that probably is a general php bug - but is worth testing on the CentOS testing packages. If using imagefttext with a Postscript type 1 font - $lstring="©" . date("Y") . " My Real Name"; or $lstring=html_entity_decode("©", ENT_COMPAT, "UTF-8") . date("Y") . "My Real Name"; both result in a ' instead of a © when rendered on the image. Works fine with a TrueType font, only an issue with Type1 fonts. Well, I only tried the second (with html_entity) with a ttf font, but point is it doesn't do what it is suppose to do with ps fonts.