dshallenberger

I'm trying to combine 2 images, based on what the user chooses. There are 4 backgrounds, and 4 characters, and the user can choose which bkg and which character they want. I have a png of each of these 8 graphics. When the user chooses their combo, I have a working script that combines those two images together, but the alpha of the top png isn't coming through. It just put black pixels anywhere there was alpha other than 0 or 100. I ended up just treating it like a transparent gif and selecting a color to be transparent, and it works great, but I'm getting jagged edges, and I would love the soft shadows I can get with an alpha png. Here's my current php script: [code]<? header ("Content-type: image/png"); $background = imagecreatefrompng($_POST['bkg']); $overlay = imagecreatefrompng($_POST['char']); imagecolortransparent($overlay,imagecolorat($overlay,0,0)); $insert_x = imagesx($overlay); $insert_y = imagesy($overlay); imagecopymerge($background,$overlay,0,0,0,0,$insert_x,$insert_y,100); imagepng($background); ?>[/code] I've seen transparency functions within gd that seem to allow use of the alpha of the png, but I can't get them to work with imagecopymerge. I'm sure it's me doing something wrong, but I don't know what. I hope my explanation above is clear. Anyone here have an idea of how I can accomplish this. Thanks, Dan

I\'m building a site that has the potential for a lot of traffic. It\'s a site for posting \'for sale\' ads for anything from trinkets to houses. It\'s the internet version of a current local \'stuff-for-sale\' magazine. Well, the current magazine has about 1,500 ads in it monthly. So I would assume the potential for that many ads, and more, would be placed monthly on this site, with everyone paying with a credit card and submitting an ad, as well as contact information, that will be written to a database. Plus, every page view will pull from the database. My concern is in my programming techniques and using mysql for a site with this much traffic. Is using basic php and sql to connect to the database and read/write ok? Should I be using a different database? or a different way to connect and/or read/write? is there a limit to open connections for mysql? or general techniques for higher-traffic sites? I\'ve written a lot of PHP and SQL interacting with mysql, but all somewhat basic/intermediate usage and much lower traffic. Does any of this make a difference? Thanks for any advice... Dan