If you're trying to load a translucent png-24 image but are finding an absence of transparency (like it's black), you need to enable alpha channel AND save the setting. I'm new to GD and it took me almost two hours to figure this out.
<?php
$imgPng = imageCreateFromPng($strImagePath);
imageAlphaBlending($imgPng, true);
imageSaveAlpha($imgPng, true);
/* Output image to browser */
header("Content-type: image/png");
imagePng($imgPng);
?>