imagecopymerge( ) function

need help combining images with alphas

[willis1480]

I need to be able to combine images with gradiant alphas, but it seems that imagecopymerge removes the alphas.

According to PHP manual this should be the function used to combine images while maintaining the alpha.

Here is code (new to GD, so this may be all wrong):
<?php
$txt = $_GET['text'];
header("Content-type: image/png");
$image = imagecreatetruecolor(110, 30);

$transparentColor = imagecolorallocatealpha($image, 200, 200, 200, 127);
imagefill($image, 0, 0, $transparentColor);

imageSaveAlpha($image, true);
ImageAlphaBlending($image, false);

$bgimage = imagecreatefrompng("button_grad.png");
imageSaveAlpha($bgimage, true);
imageAlphaBlending($bgimage, false);

imagecopymerge($image,$bgimage,0,0,0,0,110,30,0);

$text_color = imagecolorallocate($image, 0, 0, 0);

imagestring($image, 1, 5, 5, $txt, $text_color);

imagepng($bgimage);
imagedestroy($image);
imagedestroy($bgimage);
?>

***All I get is a grey image.

[willis1480]

Well, after messing with this and looking around there was just one piece messed up, I guess you use imagecopy() and NOT imagecopymerge()...I would have sworn PHP manual said to use imagecopymerge for alphas.

Misunderstood this line in the imagecopymerge:
The two images will be merged according to pct which can range from 0 to 100. When pct = 0, no action is taken, when 100 this function behaves identically to imagecopy() for pallete images, while it implements alpha transparency for true colour images.