merging canvas and background

Question

I have a canvas that has a GIF background. I need for the user to upload the drawing and the BG, so another user can see where the drawing is in relation to the BG. The canvas.

Answer 1

You can add your background image "behind" the existing canvas drawings using compositing.

// give the image an id so it's more easily fetched
<img id='bk' src="graphics/teethDrawing.gif" 
     width="705" style="position: absolute; z-index: -1" />

// fetch a reference to the bk image
var bk=document.getElementById('bk');

// causes new drawings to be drawn behind existing drawings
ctx.globalCompositeOperation='destination-over';

// draw the img to the canvas (behind existing lines)
ctx.drawImage(bk,0,0);

// always clean up! Reset to default.
ctx.globalCompositeOperation='source-over';

This process will permanently add the bk image to the canvas. If you need the bk and canvas-drawings separated then you can create a second in-memory canvas to flatten your content by drawing both the bk-image and your canvas-drawings to the in-memory canvas.

// create a temporary canvas 
var mem=document.createElement('canvas');
var mctx=mem.getContext('2d');
mem.width=canvas.width;
mem.height=canvas.height;

// draw the bk to the mem canvas
mctx.drawImage(bk,0,0);

// draw the main canvas to the mem canvas
mctx.drawImage(canvas,0,0);

Answer 2

Would you like the drawing to have height/width and position:absolute style tags? You can then send those style tags to your database so that other visitors can see the positioning of the drawing on top of the z-index:-1 image.

<img src="drawing.jpg" style="position:absolute;left:50px;top:120px;" />