Can PNG image transparency be preserved when using PHP's GDlib imagecopyresampled?

Question

The following PHP code snippet uses GD to resize a browser-uploaded PNG to 128x128. It works great, except that the transparent areas in the original image are being replaced with a solid color- black in my case.

Even though imagesavealpha is set, something isn't quite right.

What's the best way to preserve the transparency in the resampled image?

$uploadTempFile = $myField[ 'tmp_name' ]
list( $uploadWidth, $uploadHeight, $uploadType ) 
  = getimagesize( $uploadTempFile );

$srcImage = imagecreatefrompng( $uploadTempFile );    
imagesavealpha( $targetImage, true );

$targetImage = imagecreatetruecolor( 128, 128 );
imagecopyresampled( $targetImage, $srcImage, 
                    0, 0, 
                    0, 0, 
                    128, 128, 
                    $uploadWidth, $uploadHeight );

imagepng(  $targetImage, 'out.png', 9 );

Answer 1

I believe this should do the trick:

$srcImage = imagecreatefrompng($uploadTempFile);
imagealphablending($srcImage, false);
imagesavealpha($srcImage, true);

edit: Someone in the PHP docs claims imagealphablending should be true, not false. YMMV.

Answer 2

imagealphablending( $targetImage, false );
imagesavealpha( $targetImage, true );

did it for me. Thanks ceejayoz.

note, the target image needs the alpha settings, not the source image. Could you edit to correct, please ceejayoz, then i'll accept your answer.

Answer 3

@ceejayoz

edit: Someone in the PHP docs claims imagealphablending should be true, not false. YMMV.

Where? I'm working on the PHP GD Docs at the moment but our most recent submission for imageaphablending hasn't been committed yet - do you mean in the user notes?

Answer 4

Regrading the preserve transparency, then yes like stated in other posts imagesavealpha() have to be set to true, to use the alpha flag imagealphablending() must be set to false else it doesn't work.

Also I spotted two minor things in your code:

1. You don't need to call getimagesize() to get the width/height for imagecopyresmapled()
2. The $uploadWidth and $uploadHeight should be "-1" the value, since the cordinates starts at 0 and not 1, so it would copy them into an empty pixel. Replacing it with: imagesx($targetImage) - 1 and imagesy($targetImage) - 1, relativily should do :)

Answer 5

Why do you make things so complicated? the following is what I use and so far it has done the job for me.

$im = ImageCreateFromPNG($source);
$new_im = imagecreatetruecolor($new_size[0],$new_size[1]);
imagecolortransparent($new_im, imagecolorallocate($new_im, 0, 0, 0));
imagecopyresampled($new_im,$im,0,0,0,0,$new_size[0],$new_size[1],$size[0],$size[1]);

Answer 6

Why do you make things so complicated?

Your code won't work well with images with antialiased transparency for instance

Answer 7

I suppose that this might do the trick:

$uploadTempFile = $myField[ 'tmp_name' ]
list( $uploadWidth, $uploadHeight, $uploadType ) 
  = getimagesize( $uploadTempFile );

$srcImage = imagecreatefrompng( $uploadTempFile );

$targetImage = imagecreatetruecolor( 128, 128 );

$transparent = imagecolorallocate($targetImage,0,255,0);
imagecolortransparent($targetImage,$transparent);
imagefilledrectangle($targetImage,0,0,127,127,$transparent);

imagecopyresampled( $targetImage, $srcImage, 
                    0, 0, 
                    0, 0, 
                    128, 128, 
                    $uploadWidth, $uploadHeight );

imagepng(  $targetImage, 'out.png', 9 );

The downside is that the image will be stripped of every 100% green pixels. Anyhow, hope it helps :)