"Manual" polaroid effect

[paolo]

I'd like to create a polaroid effect on my own, not using the -polaroid option. By polaroid effect I mean having the bottom border wider than the other 3 borders (e.g. http://farm1.static.flickr.com/155/3549 ... 1e2584.jpg). How do I accomplish that? I searched the forum for previous similar posts but couldn't find a set of commands that can help me. Basically, I just need to create a border/frame with top and bottom wider than the sides and then "move" the image higher in the frame so that the bottom area is higher then the top area. I can create the border obviously but can't move the picture inside it. Any other approach would be ok too.

thanks a lot!!!
Paolo

P.S. I obviously started w/ the example:

convert image.jpg -bordercolor white -border 18 -bordercolor grey60 -border 1 -background none -rotate 6 -background black ( +clone -shadow 60x4+4+4 ) +swap -background none -flatten -depth 8 -quality 95 image_pol.jpg

but this has the problem that doesn't have the lower area bigger...

[magick]

You could add a blank caption to the -polaroid option:

• convert rose: -set caption "\n" -polaroid 0 rose.png

[paolo]

Hello, thanks for the prompt reply.
I'd like to avoid to use the -polaroid option as it manipulate the image "too much" and with not high resolution image, the result is a too much distorted picture. Hence I wanted to simply use the basic commands...
thanks again!

[anthony]

If you are manually creating your polaroid, and whant a thicker border at the bottom, all you need to do is to -splice' the extra width to just one side of your image, either before, or after the main border adding option.

See Splice
http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/crop/#splice

[paolo]

Hi Anthony,
thanks for the tip, it obviously worked and it's exactly what I needed! I have been trying now to add text to the white border, but I wasn't able to center it relatively to the white box only (if I use -gravity Center, the text is centered relatively to the whole image; I tried other commands w/ no success). And considering my text will be variable I can't just manually decide an offset and always use that.
Is there a way to center the text relatively to the white box with a result similar to -gravity center option?

thanks in advance

If you are manually creating your polaroid, and whant a thicker border at the bottom, all you need to do is to -splice' the extra width to just one side of your image, either before, or after the main border adding option.

See Splice
http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/crop/#splice

[anthony]

You can use 'center' but then use a offset of the center to place it relative to the box.

You have basically hit one of the current problems with IM
there is no current separation of Justification to Positioning.
Yes the two are related, but not always.

You want to justify your text 'center' but position your text 'absolutely'.
See Future Proposals...
http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/bugs/f ... tification

The only other way is to generate a 'label' or word wrapped 'caption' to
the size of the 'box' to be filled in.
http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/text/#label
then overlay (compose) that image into the 'box' on the main image.
http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/mosaics/#flatten
using '-page' offsets to position the 'boxed text'.

this may be the ideal way to do this.


I gather from the above that you want to 'fill in a form image'. This is something that has come up in the past, though there it was for 'form reading'. however the same data handling is needed to write text as you need to read text into image forms.
Essentually you need a data structure mapping data fields to image areas (size and positions).