How to Create a Swirl Distortion Effect in PHP

If you’re interested in creating custom filters for your website’s images — or looking to incorporate a photo-filter workflow for UGC uploads — Swirl Distortion is a great operation to start with. Using the PHP code examples provided below, you can easily implement an API which allows you to customize a Swirl Distortion effect on image uploads (common formats like JPG, PNG supported).

First, let’s run this command to install the SDK:

composer require cloudmersive/cloudmersive_imagerecognition_api_client

After that, let’s copy and paste the code examples below to structure our API call. You’ll have three request parameters to fulfill, including the following:

1. Degrees: an integer which determines the intensity of the swirl effect
2. Image File: the image file path for the operation
3. API Key: to authenticate the operation (get one for free by registering a free account on our website)

<?php
require_once(__DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php');

// Configure API key authorization: Apikey
$config = Swagger\Client\Configuration::getDefaultConfiguration()->setApiKey('Apikey', 'YOUR_API_KEY');



$apiInstance = new Swagger\Client\Api\FilterApi(
    
    
    new GuzzleHttp\Client(),
    $config
);
$degrees = 56; // int | Degrees of swirl
$image_file = "/path/to/inputfile"; // \SplFileObject | Image file to perform the operation on.  Common file formats such as PNG, JPEG are supported.

try {
    $result = $apiInstance->filterSwirl($degrees, $image_file);
    print_r($result);
} catch (Exception $e) {
    echo 'Exception when calling FilterApi->filterSwirl: ', $e->getMessage(), PHP_EOL;
}
?>

That’s all you need to get started filtering your images. Easy!