vips - How to achieve edge feather effect - lua

Question

I'm using the vips library for manipulating some images, specifically its Lua binding, lua-vips, and I'm trying to find a way to do a feather effect on the edge of an image.
It's the first time I try a library for this kind of task and I've been looking at this list of functions available, but still no idea on how to it. It's not complex shape, just a basic rectangular image whose top and bottom edges should blend smoothly with the background (another image that I'm currently using vips_composite() on).
Supposing that a "feather_edges" method existed, it would be something like:
local bg = vips.Image.new_from_file("foo.png")
local img = vips.Image.new_from_file("bar.png") --smaller than `bg`
img = img:feather_edges(6) --imagine a 6px feather
bg:composite(img, 'over')
But still it would be nice to specify what parts of the image should be feathered. Any ideas on how to do it?

Answer 1

You need to pull the alpha out of the top image, mask off the edges with a black border, blur the alpha to feather the edges, reattach, then compose.
Something like:
#!/usr/bin/luajit
vips = require 'vips'
function feather_edges(image, sigma)
-- split to alpha + image data
local alpha = image:extract_band(image:bands() - 1)
local image = image:extract_band(0, {n = image:bands() - 1})
-- we need to place a black border on the alpha we can then feather into,
-- and scale this border with sigma
local margin = sigma * 2
alpha = alpha
:crop(margin, margin,
image:width() - 2 * margin, image:height() - 2 * margin)
:embed(margin, margin, image:width(), image:height())
:gaussblur(sigma)
-- and reattach
return image:bandjoin(alpha)
end
bg = vips.Image.new_from_file(arg[1], {access = "sequential"})
fg = vips.Image.new_from_file(arg[2], {access = "sequential"})
fg = feather_edges(fg, 10)
out = bg:composite(fg, "over", {x = 100, y = 100})
out:write_to_file(arg[3])

Answer 2

As jcupitt said, we need to pull the alpha band from the image, blur it, join it again and composite it with the background, but using the function as it was, left a thin black border around the foreground image.
To overcome that, we need to copy the image, resize it according to the sigma parameter, extract the alpha band from the reduced copy, blur it, and replace the alpha band of the original image with it. Like this, the border of the original image will be completely covered by the transparent parts of the alpha.
local function featherEdges(img, sigma)
local copy = img:copy()
:resize(1, { vscale = (img:height() - sigma * 2) / img:height() })
:embed(0, sigma, img:width(), img:height())
local alpha = copy
:extract_band(copy:bands() - 1)
:gaussblur(sigma)
return img
:extract_band(0, { n = img:bands() - 1 })
:bandjoin(alpha)
end