GD and hotlinking

[Ajm113]

I want to display a hotlink image on a image I made on php as a background, do I have to crop the image if it was larger then the size I want it too be so I can have it as a background?

Also how can I insert a image like adding text in GD? I tried some hot linking, but I keep getting the image contains errors and I copied the code from here:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/image.examples.php