How to merge transparent PNG with image using PHP?

Question

Hello,

The situation is this: I have a small 50x50 pic. I also have a small 50x50 transparent picture which contains a frame for the 50x50 pic, so I basically want to put the transparent png on top of the image and merge those two which would lead to a done third picture that looks something like this: http://img245.imageshack.us/i/50x50n.png

Note: I don't want to do this using HTML only (I acheived this by writing a javascript plugin that put the transparent png on top of the original image).

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can do it using ImageMagick :: Composite. The first user contributed note should be enough to grasp the concept.

Answer 2

You can merge the two images together using the PHP GD2 library. For example:

<?php
 # If you don't know the type of image you are using as your originals.
 $image = imagecreatefromstring(file_get_contents($your_original_image);
 $frame = imagecreatefromstring(file_get_contents($your_frame_image));

 # If you know your originals are of type PNG.
 $image = imagecreatefrompng($your_original_image);
 $frame = imagecreatefrompng($your_frame_image);

 imagecopymerge($image, $frame, 0, 0, 0, 0, 50, 50, 100);

 # Save the image to a file
 imagepng($image, '/path/to/save/image.png');

 # Output straight to the browser.
 imagepng($image);

Answer 3

Superb guys, both examples helped me solve this problem. Thank you very much.

Answer 4

Add imagealphablending($frame,true); before imagecopymerge() if you want to keep png frame transparancy over the image.