Compute the histogram of an image using vImageHistogramCalculation - ios

Question

I'm trying to compute the histogram of an image using vImage's vImageHistogramCalculation_ARGBFFFF, but I'm getting a vImage_Error of type kvImageNullPointerArgument (error code a -21772).
Here's my code:
- (void)histogramForImage:(UIImage *)image {
//setup inBuffer
vImage_Buffer inBuffer;
//Get CGImage from UIImage
CGImageRef img = image.CGImage;
//create vImage_Buffer with data from CGImageRef
CGDataProviderRef inProvider = CGImageGetDataProvider(img);
CFDataRef inBitmapData = CGDataProviderCopyData(inProvider);
//The next three lines set up the inBuffer object
inBuffer.width = CGImageGetWidth(img);
inBuffer.height = CGImageGetHeight(img);
inBuffer.rowBytes = CGImageGetBytesPerRow(img);
//This sets the pointer to the data for the inBuffer object
inBuffer.data = (void*)CFDataGetBytePtr(inBitmapData);
//Prepare the parameters to pass to vImageHistogramCalculation_ARGBFFFF
vImagePixelCount *histogram[4] = {0};
unsigned int histogram_entries = 4;
Pixel_F minVal = 0;
Pixel_F maxVal = 255;
vImage_Flags flags = kvImageNoFlags;
vImage_Error error = vImageHistogramCalculation_ARGBFFFF(&inBuffer,
histogram,
histogram_entries,
minVal,
maxVal,
flags);
if (error) {
NSLog(#"error %ld", error);
}
//clean up
CGDataProviderRelease(inProvider);
}
I suspect it has something to do with my histogram parameter, which, according to the docs, is supposed to be "a pointer to an array of four histograms". Am I declaring it correctly?
Thanks.

Answer 1

The trouble is that you’re not allocating space to hold the computed histograms. If you are only using the histograms locally, you can put them on the stack like so [note that I’m using eight bins instead of four, to make the example more clear]:
// create an array of four histograms with eight entries each.
vImagePixelCount histogram[4][8] = {{0}};
// vImageHistogramCalculation requires an array of pointers to the histograms.
vImagePixelCount *histogramPointers[4] = { &histogram[0][0], &histogram[1][0], &histogram[2][0], &histogram[3][0] };
vImage_Error error = vImageHistogramCalculation_ARGBFFFF(&inBuffer, histogramPointers, 8, 0, 255, kvImageNoFlags);
// You can now access bin j of the histogram for channel i as histogram[i][j].
// The storage for the histogram will be cleaned up when execution leaves the
// current lexical block.
If you need the histograms to stick around outside the scope of your function, you’ll need to allocate space for them on the heap instead:
vImagePixelCount *histogram[4];
unsigned int histogramEntries = 8;
histogram[0] = malloc(4*histogramEntries*sizeof histogram[0][0]);
if (!histogram[0]) { // handle error however is appropriate }
for (int i=1; i<4; ++i) { histogram[i] = &histogram[0][i*histogramEntries]; }
vImage_Error error = vImageHistogramCalculation_ARGBFFFF(&inBuffer, histogram, 8, 0, 255, kvImageNoFlags);
// You can now access bin j of the histogram for channel i as histogram[i][j].
// Eventually you will need to free(histogram[0]) to release the storage.
Hope this helps.