ImageFTBBox returns a bounding box, not metrics, as some (most?) of the notes above seem to assume. The 8 values it returns specify the 4 corners of this bounding box. So to properly determine the width and height of a string you need to do:
$bbox = ImageFTBBox(...);
$width = abs($bbox[0]) + abs($bbox[2]); // distance from left to right
$height = abs($bbox[1]) + abs($bbox[5]); // distance from top to bottom