Blurring images in PHP

Date: 09 Dec 2012
Author: Erik Dubbelboer

For my work I needed to blur parts of an image. PHP has several methods to do this which all yield different results. This post shows the output of most of these methods.

Normal image

normal

Gaussian filter

gaussian

Gaussian filter times 20

This time I applied the gaussian filter 20 times in a row. This can be quite slow.

gaussian20

Smooth 0

The IMG_FILTER_SMOOTH filter with a smoothness level of 0.

smooth0

Smooth -2

The IMG_FILTER_SMOOTH filter with a smoothness level of -2.

smooth-2

Custom horizontal

Using the imageconvolution() function you can specify a custom convolution matrix. This allows you to do your own blurring. For example only in the horizontal direction.

custom-horizontal

Gaussian and smooth combined

You can also combine some filters. This example combines the gaussian filter with a smoothness filter of level -4. This blurs a lot while still being fast.

gaussian-smooth-4-gaussian

The code

I used the following code to generate these images.

I did not use the IMG_FILTER_SELECTIVE_BLUR filter since for some reason it messed up all the colors.

<?

function blur($name, $cb) {
  echo $name , "\n";

  $image = imagecreatefrompng('normal.png');

  // The imagefilter functions only work on the whole image.
  // We only want to blur half of the image so copy half to a temporary image,
  // apply the blur, and copy it back to the original image.
  $tempImage = imagecreate(400, 600);
  imagecopy  ($tempImage, $image, 0, 0, 0, 0, 400, 600);
  $cb($tempImage);
  imagecopy  ($image, $tempImage, 0, 0, 0, 0, 400, 600);
  imagedestroy($tempImage);

  imagepng($image, $name . '.png');
}


blur('gaussian', function($image) {
  imagefilter($image, IMG_FILTER_GAUSSIAN_BLUR);
});

blur('gaussian20', function($image) {
  for ($i = 0; $i < 20; ++$i) {
    imagefilter($image, IMG_FILTER_GAUSSIAN_BLUR);
  }
});

foreach (array(0, -2) as $i) {
  blur('smooth' . $i, function($image) use($i) {
    imagefilter($image, IMG_FILTER_SMOOTH, $i);
  });
}

blur('custom-horizontal', function($image) {
  $matrix = array(
    array(0, 0, 0),
    array(2, 1, 2),
    array(0, 0, 0)
  );

  // For normal use the third argument should be the sum of all the values in the matrix.
  imageconvolution($image, $matrix, array_sum(array_map('array_sum', $matrix)), 0);
});

blur('gaussian-smooth-4-gaussian', function($image) {
  imagefilter($image, IMG_FILTER_GAUSSIAN_BLUR);
  imagefilter($image, IMG_FILTER_SMOOTH, -4);
  imagefilter($image, IMG_FILTER_GAUSSIAN_BLUR);
});

Erik's Code