How to generate lighter/darker color with PHP?

Question

I have a hex value of some color, for example #202010.

How to generate a new color which is either lighter or darker given in percent (ie. 20% dar

Answer 1

I was interested in this, but my question was how do I add a opacity to a colour?

I wanted a colour to fade, not made lighter. i found this: http://www.gidnetwork.com/b-135.html and it worked great- code posted from original site for SO readers.

function color_blend_by_opacity( $foreground, $opacity, $background=null )
{
    static $colors_rgb=array(); // stores colour values already passed through the hexdec() functions below.
    $foreground = str_replace('#','',$foreground);
    if( is_null($background) )
        $background = 'FFFFFF'; // default background.

    $pattern = '~^[a-f0-9]{6,6}$~i'; // accept only valid hexadecimal colour values.
    if( !@preg_match($pattern, $foreground)  or  !@preg_match($pattern, $background) )
    {
        trigger_error( "Invalid hexadecimal colour value(s) found", E_USER_WARNING );
        return false;
    }

    $opacity = intval( $opacity ); // validate opacity data/number.
    if( $opacity>100  || $opacity<0 )
    {
        trigger_error( "Opacity percentage error, valid numbers are between 0 - 100", E_USER_WARNING );
        return false;
    }

    if( $opacity==100 )    // $transparency == 0
        return strtoupper( $foreground );
    if( $opacity==0 )    // $transparency == 100
        return strtoupper( $background );
    // calculate $transparency value.
    $transparency = 100-$opacity;

    if( !isset($colors_rgb[$foreground]) )
    { // do this only ONCE per script, for each unique colour.
        $f = array(  'r'=>hexdec($foreground[0].$foreground[1]),
                     'g'=>hexdec($foreground[2].$foreground[3]),
                     'b'=>hexdec($foreground[4].$foreground[5])    );
        $colors_rgb[$foreground] = $f;
    }
    else
    { // if this function is used 100 times in a script, this block is run 99 times.  Efficient.
        $f = $colors_rgb[$foreground];
    }

    if( !isset($colors_rgb[$background]) )
    { // do this only ONCE per script, for each unique colour.
        $b = array(  'r'=>hexdec($background[0].$background[1]),
                     'g'=>hexdec($background[2].$background[3]),
                     'b'=>hexdec($background[4].$background[5])    );
        $colors_rgb[$background] = $b;
    }
    else
    { // if this FUNCTION is used 100 times in a SCRIPT, this block will run 99 times.  Efficient.
        $b = $colors_rgb[$background];
    }

    $add = array(    'r'=>( $b['r']-$f['r'] ) / 100,
                     'g'=>( $b['g']-$f['g'] ) / 100,
                     'b'=>( $b['b']-$f['b'] ) / 100    );

    $f['r'] += intval( $add['r'] * $transparency );
    $f['g'] += intval( $add['g'] * $transparency );
    $f['b'] += intval( $add['b'] * $transparency );

    return sprintf( '%02X%02X%02X', $f['r'], $f['g'], $f['b'] );
}