ZapMachine/README.md

# ZapMachine

Revival of the old ZapMachine. A collage machine that merges random images layer by layer remaining about 50% of the original images


## ApFab - Zap Machine V0.9.0                   

🄯 2009 - 2026 Fabian de Boer, Vincent Bruijne
www.apfab.com

Zap stands for 'Zapped Artificial Picture', a collage made from Internet images. A Zap translates a set of words or a text into an image which reflects the visual representation of the words on the Internet.

This web application, Zap Machine, needs a number of words as input. It then takes the most relevant image that search engine Yahoo comes up with.  After having collected all images the Zap Machine creates a given number of different collages from those images.


## installation   

First you need to run a server with PHP. Please do not use a Windows machine for this purpose, while Windows suck. ApFab recommends Linux or Mac;)

ApFab Zap Machine needs some PHP extensions:
- JSON (default installed)
- CUrl (default installed)
- Imagick (Image Magick image processing Class)

You need to acquire the following API key and put it into `conf/conf.php`:

1. **Brave Search API Key** - https://api.search.brave.com/

See `conf/conf.php` for the exact constant names to use.

Adjust permission (chmod 777) for 'sessions' folder, run index.php in the www/ directory, fill in the form and voila.

# yet to come
- Logfile also generated in imgProcess Class (0.9.2)
- Number and camera filename (virgin images) input (0.9.3)
- Proper stop meganism (0.9.1)
- better error handling: dead links give dynamicly generated image thats allso used in collage (0.9.3)
- visualisation of logfile, so viewers can see what is happening (0.9.1)
- replacing all 'random' image processing parameters (0.7)