GettingStarted.md

Creating images

Overview

The way we handle images in PHP is, honestly, really dated. Since the time of PHP/FI 2.0, which introduced GD image library in 1997, the language received support for objective programming. The support has matured quite a lot with recent PHP8 additions. Still, we're working on images using functions with long names, which at some point of time, became all-lowercase. Remember how we used to write ImageSetPixel instead of imagesetpixel?

The evolution of built-in GD library is out of scope here. Instead, we're trying to reduce the boilerplate to minimum, and tackle some common pitfalls:

• Why is my transparency gone?
  • We've enabled saving alpha channel by default.
• Is my semi-transparent rectangle going to smoothly blend with an image, or maybe punch a hole in it because it overwrites pixels?
  • If you often need to switch between alpha blending modes with imagealphablending(), there is a cleaner solution. You can use two separate paint() sessions, with each one having separate setting for alphaBlending.
• I tried to paste one PNG over other with 50% opacity. I used imagecopymerge, because they said it supports setting opacity, but now the pasted part has ugly black background.
  • True opacity control is a must in any image editor with layers. We've implemented proper merging, it's just a matter of saying $layer->setOpacity(50) in your code.

Installation

php-layers can be installed by using Composer.

Composer

php-layers is currently only installable from Git, adding repository to your composer.json file:

    "repositories": [
        {
            "url": "https://github.com/naomai/php-layers.git",
            "type": "git"
        }
    ]

composer require naomai/php-layers

Standalone and Packagist methods will be added in the future.

Test

You can test your installation with a simple example.

<?php
use Naomai\PHPLayers;

require_once __DIR__ . "/vendor/autoload.php";

$testImage = new PHPLayers\Image(200, 50);
$layer = $testImage->newLayer();
$layer->paint()->text(x: 0, y: 0, text: "It Works!");
$testImage->export()->toBrowser();

Basic examples

Meme

Create a heavily outdated meme with just a few lines of code.

use Naomai\PHPLayers\Image;

// import image as background
$layersImg = Image::createFromFile("eins.jpg");

// create a watermark layer from file, and move it to bottom left corner
$watermarkLayer = $layersImg->newLayer()->importFromFile("cheesymemz.png");
$watermarkLayer
    ->selectSurface()
    ->move(anchor: "bottom left")
    ->apply();

// make things more THUG
$thugLayer = $layersImg->newLayer()->importFromFile("thug.png");
$thugLayer
    ->selectSurface()
    ->move(x: 290, y: 95)
    ->apply();

// export the image, and include it in the HTML file
$dataUrl = $layersImg->export()->asDataUrl("webp");
echo "<img src=\"".htmlspecialchars($dataUrl)."\"/><br/>";

The image is made of 3 layers, including the background. If we add an extra line, we can show all the layers as a split view:

// TiledComposer is putting all layers in a grid, instead of merging them
$layersImg->setComposer(new PHPLayers\Composers\TiledComposer());

$dataUrl = $layersImg->export()->asDataUrl("webp");
echo "<img src=\"".htmlspecialchars($dataUrl)."\"/><br/>";