Take squarish photos with UIImagePickerController - ios

Question

Is there an elegant way to only allow the user to take squarish photos with UIImagePickerController instead of the default rectangular ones? Something open source, maybe?

Answer 1

Here's the easiest way to do it (without reimplementing UIImagePickerController). First, use an overlay to make the camera field look square. Here's an example for 3.5" screens (you'd need to update it to work for iPhone 5):
UIImagePickerController *imagePickerController = [[UIImagePickerController alloc] init];
imagePickerController.sourceType = source;
if (source == UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera) {
//Create camera overlay
CGRect f = imagePickerController.view.bounds;
f.size.height -= imagePickerController.navigationBar.bounds.size.height;
CGFloat barHeight = (f.size.height - f.size.width) / 2;
UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(f.size);
[[UIColor colorWithWhite:0 alpha:.5] set];
UIRectFillUsingBlendMode(CGRectMake(0, 0, f.size.width, barHeight), kCGBlendModeNormal);
UIRectFillUsingBlendMode(CGRectMake(0, f.size.height - barHeight, f.size.width, barHeight), kCGBlendModeNormal);
UIImage *overlayImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
UIImageView *overlayIV = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithFrame:f];
overlayIV.image = overlayImage;
[imagePickerController.cameraOverlayView addSubview:overlayIV];
}
imagePickerController.delegate = self;
[self presentViewController:imagePickerController animated:YES completion:nil];
Then, after you get a picture back from the UIImagePickerController, crop it to a square with something like this:
//Crop the image to a square
CGSize imageSize = image.size;
CGFloat width = imageSize.width;
CGFloat height = imageSize.height;
if (width != height) {
CGFloat newDimension = MIN(width, height);
CGFloat widthOffset = (width - newDimension) / 2;
CGFloat heightOffset = (height - newDimension) / 2;
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(CGSizeMake(newDimension, newDimension), NO, 0.);
[image drawAtPoint:CGPointMake(-widthOffset, -heightOffset)
blendMode:kCGBlendModeCopy
alpha:1.];
image = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
}
May be it will help you.