How to use PHP drawing functions with Laravel - php

Question

I'm trying to use PHP shape drawing functions with the Laravel framework but I am having some trouble.
So, I just to test it out, basically just copied the example from php.net and used it in a closure and a test route.
Route::get('maptest', function()
{
$image = imagecreatetruecolor(200, 200);
$red = imagecolorallocate($image, 227, 32, 32);
imagefilledrectangle($image, 100, 80, 50, 25, $red);
header('Content-Type: image/png');
imagepng($image);
imagedestroy($image);
});
doing it this way works fine.
the problem is when I throw a Controller and a View into the mix. When I set the headers and what not and create a Response, I get a little broken picture icon in the top left corner of the window and nothing on the page loads at all.
this is how I am setting the headers.
(I know this is posted everywhere, but none of the solutions I could find seemed to work for me.)
public function show($id)
{
$user = User::find($id);
$view = View::make('profile/home', ['user' => $user]);
$response = Response::make($view, 200);
$response->header('Content-type', 'image/png');
return $response;
}
So the result of the above code (inside my controller) gives me a little broken picture icon in top left corner of window.