How to save UIView content (screenshot) without reducing it's quality - ios

I have a UIView and I want to save it's content to an image, I successfully did that using UIGraphicsBeginImageContext and UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext() but the problem is that the image quality is reduced. Is there a way to take a screenshot/save UIView content to an image without reducing it's quality?
Here's a snippet of my code:
UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(self.myView.frame.size);
[self.myview.layer renderInContext:UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()];
UIImage *viewImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();

Try Following Code :
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(YourView.bounds.size, NO, 0);
[YourView drawViewHierarchyInRect:YourView.bounds afterScreenUpdates:YES];
UIImage *newImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
This code working Awsome...!!!

Mital Solanki’s answer is a fine solution, but the root of the problem is that your view is on a retina screen (so has a scale factor of 2) and you are creating a graphics context with a scale factor of 1. The documentation for UIGraphicsBeginImageContext states:
This function is equivalent to calling the UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions function with the opaque parameter set to NO and a scale factor of 1.0.
Instead use UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions with a scale of 0, which is equivalent to passing a scale of [[UIScreen mainScreen] scale].

Related

Am I losing resolution after grabbing image of screen then cropping it?

I have some code where I'm grabbing an image of the screen, and then cropping it based on some boundary values:
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(self.mainView.bounds.size, NO, 0.0);
[self.mainView.layer renderInContext:UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()];
UIImage *comicImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(CGSizeMake(boundary.width, boundary.height), NO, 0.0);
[comicImage drawAtPoint:CGPointMake(-boundary.xMin, -boundary.yMin)];
comicImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
What I'm wondering is, am I producing a poor quality image with low resolution using the above method? Is there a better way to go about doing this?
Maybe,you can use the follow code
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(size, NO, [UIScreen mainScreen].scale);

iOS: renderInContext and Landscape orientation issue

I'm trying to save the currently shown views on my iOS device for a certain app, and this is working properly. But I've got a problem as soon as I'm trying to save a UIImageView in Landscape orientation.
See the following image that describes my problem:
I'm using Auto layout for this app, and it runs on both iPhone and iPad. It seems like the ImageView is always saved as shown in portrait mode, and I'm a little bit stuck right now.
This is the code I use:
CGSize frameSize = self.view.frame.size;
if (UIInterfaceOrientationIsLandscape(self.interfaceOrientation)) {
frameSize = CGSizeMake(self.view.frame.size.height, self.view.frame.size.width);
}
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(frameSize, NO, 0.0);
CGContextRef ctx = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
CGFloat scale = CGRectGetWidth(self.view.frame) / CGRectGetWidth(self.view.bounds);
CGContextScaleCTM(ctx, scale, scale);
[self.view.layer renderInContext:ctx];
[self.delegate photoSaved:UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext()];
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
Looking forward to your help!
I still have no idea what your exact issue is but using your screenshot code makes a bit strange image (not rotated or anything though, just too small). Can you try this code instead please.
+ (UIImage *)imageFromView:(UIView *)view {
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(view.bounds.size, view.opaque, .0f);
[view.layer renderInContext:UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()];
UIImage * img = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
return img;
}
Other then that you must understand there is a huge difference between UIImage and CGImage as the UIImage includes the orientation while CGImage does not. When dealing with image transformations it is usually with the CGImage and getting its width or height will discard the orientation. That means a CGImage will have flipped dimensions when its orientation is not up (UIImageOrientationUp). But usually when dealing with such images you create a CGImage from the context and then use [UIImage imageWithCGImage:ref scale:1.0f orientation:originalOrientation]. Only if you wish to explicitly rotate the image so it has no orientation (being UIImageOrientationUp) you need to rotate and translate the image and draw it onto the context.
Anyway, this orientation issues are quite fixed by now, UIImagePNGRepresentation respects the orientation and you have an image constructor from the CGImage already written above which is what used to be missing in the past if I remember correctly.

Getting black (empty) image from UIView drawViewHierarchyInRect:afterScreenUpdates:

After successfully using UIView’s new drawViewHierarchyInRect:afterScreenUpdates: method introduced in iOS 7 to obtain an image representation (via UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext()) for blurring my app also needed to obtain just a portion of a view. I managed to get it in the following manner:
UIImage *image;
CGSize blurredImageSize = [_blurImageView frame].size;
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(blurredImageSize, YES, .0f);
[aView drawViewHierarchyInRect: [aView bounds] afterScreenUpdates: YES];
image = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
This lets me retrieve aView’s content following _blurImageView’s frame.
Now, however, I would need to obtain a portion of aView, but this time this portion would be “inside”. Below is an image representing what I would like to achieve.
I have already tried creating a new graphics context and setting its size to the portion’s size (red box) and calling aView to draw in the rect that represents the red box’s frame (of course its superview’s frame being equal to aView’s) but the image obtained is all black (empty).
After a lot of tweaking I managed to find something that did the job, however I heavily doubt this is the way to go.
Here’s my [edited-for-Stack Overflow] code that works:
- (UIImage *) imageOfPortionOfABiggerView
{
UIView *bigViewToExtractFrom;
UIImage *image;
UIImage *wholeImage;
CGImageRef _image;
CGRect imageToExtractFrame;
CGFloat screenScale = [[UIScreen mainScreen] scale];
// have to scale the rect due to (I suppose) the screen's scale for Core Graphics.
imageToExtractFrame = CGRectApplyAffineTransform(imageToExtractFrame, CGAffineTransformMakeScale(screenScale, screenScale));
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions([bigViewToExtractFrom bounds].size, YES, screenScale);
[bigViewToExtractFrom drawViewHierarchyInRect: [bigViewToExtractFrom bounds] afterScreenUpdates: NO];
wholeImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
// obtain a CGImage[Ref] from another CGImage, this lets me specify the rect to extract.
// However since the image is from a UIView which are all at 2x scale (retina) if you specify a rect in points CGImage will not take the screen's scale into consideration and will process the rect in pixels. You'll end up with an image from the wrong rect and half the size.
_image = CGImageCreateWithImageInRect([wholeImage CGImage], imageToExtractFrame);
wholeImage = nil;
// have to specify the image's scale due to CGImage not taking the screen's scale into consideration.
image = [UIImage imageWithCGImage: _image scale: screenScale orientation: UIImageOrientationUp];
CGImageRelease(_image);
return image;
}
I hope this will help anyone that stumped upon my issue. Feel free to improve my snippet.
Thanks

Is it possible to use the build in iOS crop tool in my app?

In the photo albums app there's a build in edit -> cropping tool. Is it possible to use that tool in an app instead of writing it on my own? Is it a part of the framework?
No, there is no built-in crop tool. However, it would not be that hard to write such a tool.
You'd need to create a control that let the user drag around an image in a scroll view, and collect the coordinates.
Then you'd create a graphics context and use the UIImage method drawInRect: to draw the image into a rect that's larger than the graphics context. The result would be to draw a cropped portion of the image into the context. Then you'd extract an image from the graphics context and discard the graphics context.
No that is not part of SDK, but you can easily crop images in iOS.
- (UIImage *)resizeImage:(UIImage *)image width:(float)w height:(float)h {
UIImage *croppedImage = image;
CGSize size = CGSizeMake(w, h);
UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(size);
CGRect rect = CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, size.width, size.height);
[image drawInRect:rect];
croppedImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
return croppedImage;
}
I created a crop tool that might fit your need. It's not based on a scroll view, but rather letting the user choose a frame around their image.
https://github.com/nicholjs/BFCropInterface

UIView screenshot with magnificationFilter

I have a tiny qrcode UIImage set to a large UIImageView. In order to avoid any gradient from black to white when amplifying, I setted the UIImageView magnification filter to kCAFilterNearest as shown below (it works):
[QRCodeImageView layer].magnificationFilter = kCAFilterNearest;
Now I need to take a screenshot from this ImageView, but the result image is ignoring the magnification filter:
Here is my screenshot code:
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(CGSizeMake(QRCodeImageView.frame.size.width, QRCodeImageView.frame.size.height),YES, 2.0f);
CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
[QRCodeImageView.layer renderInContext:context];
UIImage *capturedImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
So, the question is, how to render in context with a given magnification filter?
Thanks in advance

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