Create a Postcard with PHP

Postcard are very popular for birthday, holidays or simply say something nice to someone we like.

Many website allows you to send a postcard to your friend of family member but at what price?

Some sites requires the name and the email of the recipient and also yours as well! When you read carefully their terms and conditions, you can read something like:

By sending a postcard, we (the website) allow sending unsolicited emails, bulk mail, spam or other materials to users of the site or any other individual or entity.

your Email will be provided or sent at a third party.

Here's a quick PHP script that will allow to create your own custom postcard without all the spams.

Requirement:

This script requires some files:

The font: otto.ttf
The base template image: postcard-template.jpg
A sample image: paris.jpg

The Code:


$sourceImage = '/path/to/postcard-template.jpg';
$uploadedImage = '/path/to/paris.jpg';
$mime = '';
$font = '/path/to/otto.ttf';
$message = "Trip To Paris!\namazing!!\nsee you soon, love\nxxx";

function CroppedThumbnail($source, $width, $height, &$mime) {
  $data = getimagesize($source);
  $sourceWidth = $data[0];
  $sourceHeight = $data[1];
  $mime = $data['mime'];
  $image = imagecreatefromjpeg($source);
  $sourceRatio = $sourceWidth/$sourceHeight;
  if (($width/$height) > $sourceRatio) {
    $newHeight = $width/$sourceRatio;
    $newWidth = $width;
  }
  else {
    $newWidth = $height*$sourceRatio;
    $newHeight = $height;
  }
  $croppedImage = imagecreatetruecolor(round($newWidth), round($newHeight));
  imagecopyresampled($croppedImage, $image, 0, 0, 0, 0, $newWidth, $newHeight, $sourceWidth, $sourceHeight);
  $thumb = imagecreatetruecolor($width, $height);
  imagecopyresampled($thumb, $croppedImage, 0, 0, (($newWidth/2)-($width/2)), (($newHeight/2)-($height/2)), $width, $height, $width, $height);
  imagedestroy($croppedImage);
  imagedestroy($image);
  return $thumb;
}

// Create the cropped image first
$newThumb = CroppedThumbnail($uploadedImage,240,315, $mime);
switch($mime) {
  case 'image/gif':
    $image = imagecreatefromgif($sourceImage);
    break;
  case 'image/jpeg':
    $image = imagecreatefromjpeg($sourceImage);
    break;
  case 'image/png':
    $image = imagecreatefrompng($sourceImage);
    break;
  default:
    // error or stop script
    break;
}

imagettftext($image, 40, -1, 320, 180, imagecolorallocate($image, 50, 50, 50), $font, $message);
imagecopy($image, $newThumb, 30, 40, 0, 0, 240, 315);
header('Content-Type: image/jpeg');
imagejpeg($image);
imagedestroy($image);

Result:

This will output something like: postcard final