Question

Is it possible to remove the whitespace surrounding an image in PHP?

NOTE: to clarify I mean something like photoshops trim feature.

Thanks.

Answer 1

To trim all whitespace, as you call it, surrounding the interesting part of the image, first we find out where the “whitespace” stops, and then we copy everything inside of those borders.

//load the image
$img = imagecreatefromjpeg("http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/413XvF0yukL._SL500_AA280_.jpg");

//find the size of the borders
$b_top = 0;
$b_btm = 0;
$b_lft = 0;
$b_rt = 0;

//top
for(; $b_top < imagesy($img); ++$b_top) {
  for($x = 0; $x < imagesx($img); ++$x) {
    if(imagecolorat($img, $x, $b_top) != 0xFFFFFF) {
       break 2; //out of the 'top' loop
    }
  }
}

//bottom
for(; $b_btm < imagesy($img); ++$b_btm) {
  for($x = 0; $x < imagesx($img); ++$x) {
    if(imagecolorat($img, $x, imagesy($img) - $b_btm-1) != 0xFFFFFF) {
       break 2; //out of the 'bottom' loop
    }
  }
}

//left
for(; $b_lft < imagesx($img); ++$b_lft) {
  for($y = 0; $y < imagesy($img); ++$y) {
    if(imagecolorat($img, $b_lft, $y) != 0xFFFFFF) {
       break 2; //out of the 'left' loop
    }
  }
}

//right
for(; $b_rt < imagesx($img); ++$b_rt) {
  for($y = 0; $y < imagesy($img); ++$y) {
    if(imagecolorat($img, imagesx($img) - $b_rt-1, $y) != 0xFFFFFF) {
       break 2; //out of the 'right' loop
    }
  }
}

//copy the contents, excluding the border
$newimg = imagecreatetruecolor(
    imagesx($img)-($b_lft+$b_rt), imagesy($img)-($b_top+$b_btm));

imagecopy($newimg, $img, 0, 0, $b_lft, $b_top, imagesx($newimg), imagesy($newimg));

//finally, output the image
header("Content-Type: image/jpeg");
imagejpeg($newimg);

My old example, that assumes an identical “border” on all sides of the image, just to clarify the comments 🙂

//load the image
$img = imagecreatefromjpeg("img.jpg");

//find the size of the border.
$border = 0;
while(imagecolorat($img, $border, $border) == 0xFFFFFF) {
  $border++;
}

//copy the contents, excluding the border
//This code assumes that the border is the same size on all sides of the image.
$newimg = imagecreatetruecolor(imagesx($img)-($border*2), imagesy($img)-($border*2));
imagecopy($newimg, $img, 0, 0, $border, $border, imagesx($newimg), imagesy($newimg));

//finally, if you want, overwrite the original image
imagejpeg($newimg, "img.jpg");