UIButtonBarItem looks wrong - ios

Question

I think this is going to be a stupid question, but I can't seem to find the answer. I have a few simple lines of code to put a button in the navigation bar:
UIBarButtonItem *cancelButton=[[UIBarButtonItem alloc]initWithImage:[UIImage imageNamed:#"button-cancel.png"] style:UIBarButtonItemStylePlain target:self action:#selector(cancelPressed:)];
UINavigationItem *item = [[UINavigationItem alloc] init];
item.leftBarButtonItem = cancelButton;
item.hidesBackButton = YES;
[self.navigationBar pushNavigationItem:item animated:NO];
This button works fine, but it looks like this:
Any thoughts?

Answer 1

You probably want to create the bar button item using a custom view, where the custom view is a UIButton:
UIImage *cancelImage = [UIImage imageNamed:#"button-cancel"];
UIButton *cancelButton = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom];
cancelButton.frame = (CGRect){CGPointZero, cancelImage.size);
[cancelButton setImage:cancelImage forState:UIControlStateNormal];
UIBarButtonItem *cancelBarButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithCustomView:cancelButton];

Answer 2

Set your button (cancelButton) size according to the size of the button-cancel.png.
stopButton.frame = CGRectMake ();

Answer 3

Instead, create a custom type UIButton with your image. Set the target and selector of the UIbutton to what you wish the bar button item to do. Then initialize the bar button item as follows:
UIBarButtonItem *barButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithCustomView:button];
Where button is your UIButton using the desired image.

Answer 4

UIBarButtonItem/initWithImage: is typically used for making iconic buttons - not buttons that have text in them.
If you just want to change how the common textual UIBarButtonItem looks, you just need to set the background image of your bar button item. This way you don't have to have images for each button that contain your button text.
Docs: - (void)setBackgroundImage:(UIImage *)backgroundImage forState:(UIControlState)state barMetrics:(UIBarMetrics)barMetrics
You can also set this app-wide by calling setBackgroundImage: on the UIBarButtonItem appearance proxy.
Lastly, note that you'll likely need to create a resizeable image to pass to setBackgroundImage. This will let your single image accomodate any button size. See UIImage/resizeableImageWithCapInsets:resizingMode: (iOS6) or UIImage/stretchableImageWithLeftCapWidth:topCapHeight: (pre iOS6)
You can certainly do what #Wain suggests but there are drawbacks. For one, your press-handler will no longer be sending a UIBarButtonItem as the 'sender'. That may not seem like much until you have a common handler that suddenly needs to determine if the sender is a UIBarButtonItem or a UIButton, or if you want to present a UIPopoverController against this BarButtonItem (but you only have the UIButton reference...)