The second introduction will be available in 5.1.2, it is nothing really new and I was even sure it was already done.
I brought image convolutions to the public in PHP 5.1.0 (was lying in cvs for some months already), using a 3x3 matrix, the factor and the offset. A lot of really usefull or nice effects can be realized using image convolutions. I will show you some here.
Be sure to check out the post for examples of what can be done with these new, integrated features. The "Gaussian Blur" is very nice...











