Its perfectly fine to answer self question but when I saw your question my fingers just wanted to write 

> Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you've tried and why it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, and most of all it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer! ([source](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/170245/176320))

I mean the question should be good and provide reasonable information so that other users can answer too regardles of the self answer.  

What I (may be community) feel when I see your question(I am not either concern answer or taking)

>Is it possible to add glow or a shadow to text in GD?

Please do some efforts spent some time in research( [google][1] ) show efforts.

@replay to your comment 

>The imagettftext function is kind of poorly named and could be called add_text_to_existing_image.

Well it is not a reason at all to change name of function since it is poorly named. I think [imagettftext][2] `(  image(i)  TrueType(tt) fonts(f) text )` is fine already


  [1]: https://www.google.co.in/search?q=addd%20glow%20and%20shadow%20text%20to%20gdf&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=b2B&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&sclient=psy-ab&q=add%20glow%20and%20shadow%20text%20to%20gd&oq=add%20glow%20and%20shadow%20text%20to%20gd&gs_l=serp.12...0.0.1.24907.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0...0.0...1c..7.psy-ab.SwdSk26hKPE&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.44011176,d.bmk&fp=35e4d65c5edfdc10&biw=786&bih=765
  [2]: http://php.net/manual/en/function.imagettftext.php