I am looking for a way to add a drop shadow to an image using PHP. Before you answer or vote to close: I am not looking to do this using CSS or HTML. I want to generate an image file. This is not a duplicate of this question nor this one.
I am looking for a very specific effect. For example, given this input image:
I want to produce the following image:
TL;DR: This image above was generated using Photoshop’s Drop Shadow effect. I want a look very similar to that. For reference, here’s the settings our design team used. Ideally, I’d have similar control in my code for angle, distance, opacity, etc:
I have full access to our debian-linus-based servers, so any GD or ImageMagick solution will work. As will any FOSS linux software solution, although I’d prefer a way to do it with IM or GD as those are already installed and don’t require new software to be installed.
The shadow must be able to be placed on a transparent, non-rectangular PNG!
I’m asking the question mainly because the scripts and solutions I have found on the web either only produce rectangular shadows, look like total poo, or just plain don’t work at all.
You’re not going to be able to do this in PHP without building in a full edge-detector algorithm and significant processing overhead. Look into using GIMP with some script-fu, and let it do the hard work for you.