Watermarks

[manipura]

PHP + GD 2.0

So is it impossible to get a good looking image as a watermark? Like one with transparency or is it just not supported?

Every image I try to put as a watermark ends up being horrible quality. Especialy when trying to use transparency.

Is there any way to get good quality watermarks on an image using php?


Here is my code

<?PHP

header('content-type: image/jpeg');
$image2mark = "cover_thumb.jpg";
$watermark = imagecreatefromgif('sm.gif');

$watermark_width = imagesx($watermark);  
$watermark_height = imagesy($watermark);

$image = imagecreatefromjpeg("$image2mark");

$size = getimagesize($image2mark);

$dest_x = $size[0] - $watermark_width - 5;  
$dest_y = $size[1] - $watermark_height - 5;

imagecopymerge($image, $watermark, $dest_x, $dest_y, 0, 0, $watermark_width, $watermark_height, 100);

imagejpeg($image);  
imagedestroy($image);  
imagedestroy($watermark);

?>

[Rubble]

Use ImagMagick

To be honist I have not compaired them but give it a go if you have ImageMagick installed.

This will add a greyscale watermark to the center of your image:

<?php
exec("/usr/local/bin/composite -watermark 30% -gravity center watermark_image.gif image_to_watermark.jpg output.jpg");
?>

If you do not have ImageMagick installed and want to get me to try something send me your images and I will try it out, you could then hassel your hosts to install it if you like the results.

[Kokos]

You are using imagejpeg, as you probably know, jpeg uses quality ranging from 0-100.
In case of your script, use this:
imagejpeg($image,NULL,100);

For more information:
http://php.net/manual/en/function.imagejpeg.php

[kaloyan]

...

...
$watermark = imagecreatefromgif('sm.gif'); 

There's a thing with palettes and GD. When the image is created from a GIF, it has a `restricted` palette of only 256 colors, and this sometimes results in weird results. Anyway, why don't you try Asido? If you go to the Asido website, you can see examples of how to apply watermarks, and you can see how the result looks like: like
this one (on watermark gravity) and this one (on watermarks from GIFs and JPEGs)