How do I take a screenshot and crop out white space? - ios

Question

I have an app that allows a user to add a photo to their photo and save it kind of like a sticker app. I have it set up to take a screen shot right now but the problem I am facing is that it takes a screenshot of the entire UIView so there is a lot of white space and the UIButtons are visible in the final saved photo in the camera roll.
How do I take a screen shot that crops out the white space from the app?
Here's what I have right now...
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(UIScreen.mainScreen().bounds.size, false, 0);
self.view.drawViewHierarchyInRect(view.bounds, afterScreenUpdates: true)
var image: UIImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
UIImageWriteToSavedPhotosAlbum(image, nil, nil, nil)
self.savedImageAlert()
self.dismissViewControllerAnimated(true, completion: nil)
I have played around with making the bounds equal to the UIImageview called userImageView but that made my photo distorted and still had a lot of white space just at the top of the photo instead of the top and the bottom.
I am new to Swift and have a hard time with the CG/UIGraphics stuff so any help would be really appreciated...I've spent hours researching this and have been getting more and more confused!
NOTE/UPDATE: I have changed my code to the following:
// I defined myView outside of both functions so that I could reference myView in both the function and the IBAction function
let myView = UIView()
func imageWithView(myView:UIView)->UIImage{
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(view.bounds.size, false, 0.0)
view.layer.renderInContext(UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()!)
let image = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext()
UIGraphicsEndImageContext()
return image
}
#IBAction func mergeAndSaveImage(sender: AnyObject) {
let newImage = imageWithView(myView)
UIImageWriteToSavedPhotosAlbum(newImage, nil, nil, nil)
self.savedImageAlert()
self.dismissViewControllerAnimated(true, completion: nil)
In my storyboard I set up a new UIView, renamed it and dragged my two UIImageViews underneath it in the document outline.
I am still not able to get this to work, when I save the image it saves the entire screen with white space and UIbuttons.
First, I don't want the image with the Detroit notebook to be so small, on the storyboard it's much bigger but when I run the app it gets small in the uiview.
Second, the code just saves an image of the entire screen...I only want the UIView that contains the two uiimages to be saved as an image.
Here's what it saves as....
Here's what the code saves...

Answer 1

If you could manage to add a photo inside some UIView then this method can help you. You just have to pass the UIView here and for that particular UIView only it will return an UIImage object. It will not take other screen area but just the UIView which you will be passing as a parameter.
So the hierarchy will be like this. There will be a UIImageView within a UIView and all the other things required for your sticker will be there in your same UIView which will be passed in the below method in order to retrieve only the specific bounded UIImage.
That UIImage can easily be saved or retrieved anywhere.
//function to convert the given UIView into an UIImage
func imageWithView(view:UIView)->UIImage{
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(view.bounds.size, false, 0.0)
view.layer.renderInContext(UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()!)
let image = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext()
UIGraphicsEndImageContext()
return image
}
and later on You can save only that image where ever you want.
UIImageWriteToSavedPhotosAlbum(image, nil, nil, nil)
EDIT:On button click perform this:
#IBAction func buttonAction(sender: AnyObject) {
// you will get an UIImage object
let image = imageWithView(yourCustomView)
//Then save your image
UIImageWriteToSavedPhotosAlbum(image, nil, nil, nil)
}
Here is the screenshot