TTF Text not displaying correctly

["Brent Clements" <bclem@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Does anybody know off the top of their head why truetype font text would look greyed out?

This is my code:

<?php

$im = @imagecreatefromgif("testimage.gif");
$myfont = "inc/arial.ttf";
$mycolor = imagecolorallocate($im,0,0,0);

imagettftext($im, 8, 0, 580, 118, $mycolor, $myfont, "test string");

imagejpeg($im);
imagedestroy($im);

?>

The text looks greyed out and it's a bit distorted. 

Thanks,
Brent