Color of PHP: is it a Pear thing?

ATS16805

i had an entire page written on this question (as usual), but i figure it comes down to being as simple as this:
can i get php to tell me about the contrast of an image it's going to print? which is dark, which is light?

i looked around at some pear stuff-- but it's so vast. i'd appreciate any recommendations in terms of a Pear beginner's best spots for learning (as in: learning how to find what you want / need; learning how to use it once you find it, etc.)

thanks!

Weedpacket

Doesn't it depend on how much ink there is in the printer? 🙂

ATS16805

HAHAHAHA
nice.
hahaaha. sorry--- but i had to record that outburst

(ya clown!)

😉

Weedpacket

Well, no, but really. You mean you want to go through an image, find the darkest and lightest pixels, and determine the difference in brightness between them?

ATS16805

yes-- that is what i had in mind-- except-- not within a single image
in other words, a group of several, separate images would replace the pixels in your suggestion, i suppose. so instead of determining where the light and dark spots are on a single 2d "object", it would be where the light and dark spots are within a container filled w/ many of them (i.e. -- the folder)

the purpose being-- ... hmmm... why was it? crust! i forget now-- it had something to do w/ filtering images for the purpose of viewing... something... statistical maybe? oh!! i've got it!!

i wanted to use CSS to change the BG of the div which would hold any of number of light and dark "heading images" -- the idea being to do as well as i could to make each "test" image appear as if it belonged within its would-be temporary context. because there are nearly ninety images, i didn't want to hard-code any css, but the obsessive compulsive in me wouldn't let it be "put into production" w/out it-- so it's as yet undone. all of this to ask a friend "which do you like best?"
holy heck! i need a day-job badly!!

Weedpacket

Hmmm. Well, let's say you just want the overall colour of an image (so that you have something to compare against the background colour). You can get that by imageresampling the entire image down to a 1x1 pixel image, and then getting the colour of that pixel (probably best to do it in stages - halving the dimensions each time, say).
You could do that with several pieces taken from the image, and get the overall colour of each, then average them together. Specifically, strips (of a certain width) taken from each edge of the image. Then, to see if the interior of the image contrasts well, take the inner part of the image, scale that down, and compare it with the averaged "colour of the border".

That's just a random idea I'm throwing out there.