Is it Possible to Center Content in a UIScrollView Like Apple's Photos App?

Question

I have been struggling with this problem for some time and there seems to be no clear answer. Please let me know if anyone has figured this out.

I want to display a photo in a UIScrollView that is centered on the screen (the image may be in portrait or landscape orientation).

I want to be able to zoom and pan the image only to the edge of the image as in the photos app.

I've tried altering the contentInset in the viewDidEndZooming method and that sort of does the trick, but there's several glitches.

I've also tried making the imageView the same size as the scrollView and centering the image there. The problem is that when you zoom, you can scroll around the entire imageView and part of the image may scroll off the view.

I found a similar post here and gave my best workaround, but no real answer was found:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/638299/uiscrollview-with-centered-uiimageview-like-photos-app

Answer 1

Here is the best solution I could come up with for this problem. The trick is to constantly readjust the imageView's frame. I find this works much better than constantly adjusting the contentInsets or contentOffSets. I had to add a bit of extra code to accommodate both portrait and landscape images.

If anyone can come up with a better way to do it, I would love to hear it.

Here's the code:

- (void) scrollViewDidEndZooming:(UIScrollView *)scrollView withView:(UIView *)view atScale:(float)scale {

CGSize screenSize = [[self view] bounds].size;

if (myScrollView.zoomScale <= initialZoom +0.01) //This resolves a problem with the code not working correctly when zooming all the way out.
{
    imageView.frame = [[self view] bounds];
    [myScrollView setZoomScale:myScrollView.zoomScale +0.01];
}

if (myScrollView.zoomScale > initialZoom)
{
    if (CGImageGetWidth(temporaryImage.CGImage) > CGImageGetHeight(temporaryImage.CGImage)) //If the image is wider than tall, do the following...
    {
            if (screenSize.height >= CGImageGetHeight(temporaryImage.CGImage) * [myScrollView zoomScale]) //If the height of the screen is greater than the zoomed height of the image do the following...
            {
                    imageView.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, 320*(myScrollView.zoomScale), 368);
            }
            if (screenSize.height < CGImageGetHeight(temporaryImage.CGImage) * [myScrollView zoomScale]) //If the height of the screen is less than the zoomed height of the image do the following...
            {
                    imageView.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, 320*(myScrollView.zoomScale), CGImageGetHeight(temporaryImage.CGImage) * [myScrollView zoomScale]);
            }
    }
    if (CGImageGetWidth(temporaryImage.CGImage) < CGImageGetHeight(temporaryImage.CGImage)) //If the image is taller than wide, do the following...
    {
            CGFloat portraitHeight;
            if (CGImageGetHeight(temporaryImage.CGImage) * [myScrollView zoomScale] < 368)
            { portraitHeight = 368;}
            else {portraitHeight = CGImageGetHeight(temporaryImage.CGImage) * [myScrollView zoomScale];}

            if (screenSize.width >= CGImageGetWidth(temporaryImage.CGImage) * [myScrollView zoomScale]) //If the width of the screen is greater than the zoomed width of the image do the following...
            {
                    imageView.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, 320, portraitHeight);
            }
            if (screenSize.width < CGImageGetWidth (temporaryImage.CGImage) * [myScrollView zoomScale]) //If the width of the screen is less than the zoomed width of the image do the following...
            {
                    imageView.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, CGImageGetWidth(temporaryImage.CGImage) * [myScrollView zoomScale], portraitHeight);
            }
    }
    [myScrollView setZoomScale:myScrollView.zoomScale -0.01];
}

Here is how I calculate the the min zoom scale in the viewDidLoad method.

CGSize photoSize = [temporaryImage size];
CGSize screenSize = [[self view] bounds].size;

CGFloat widthRatio = screenSize.width / photoSize.width;
CGFloat heightRatio = screenSize.height / photoSize.height;
initialZoom = (widthRatio > heightRatio) ? heightRatio : widthRatio;
[myScrollView setMinimumZoomScale:initialZoom];
[myScrollView setZoomScale:initialZoom];
[myScrollView setMaximumZoomScale:3.0];

Answer 2

One elegant way to center the content of UISCrollView is this.

Add one observer to the contentSize of your UIScrollView, so this method will be called everytime the content change...

[myScrollView addObserver:delegate 
               forKeyPath:@"contentSize"
                  options:(NSKeyValueObservingOptionNew) 
                  context:NULL];

Now on your observer method:

- (void)observeValueForKeyPath:(NSString *)keyPath   ofObject:(id)object   change:(NSDictionary *)change   context:(void *)context { 

 // Correct Object Class.
 UIScrollView *pointer = object;

 // Calculate Center.
 CGFloat topCorrect = ([pointer bounds].size.height - [pointer viewWithTag:100].bounds.size.height * [pointer zoomScale])  / 2.0 ;
   topCorrect = ( topCorrect < 0.0 ? 0.0 : topCorrect );

 topCorrect = topCorrect - (  pointer.frame.origin.y - imageGallery.frame.origin.y );

 // Apply Correct Center.
 pointer.center = CGPointMake(pointer.center.x,
         pointer.center.y + topCorrect ); }

• You should change the [pointer viewWithTag:100]. Replace by your content view UIView.

  • Also change imageGallery pointing to your window size.

This will correct the center of the content everytime his size change.

NOTE: The only way this content don't works very well is with standard zoom functionality of the UIScrollView.

Answer 3

This code should work on most versions of iOS (and has been tested to work on 3.1 upwards).

It's based on the Apple WWDC code for the PhotoScroll app.

Add the below to your subclass of UIScrollView, and replace tileContainerView with the view containing your image or tiles:

- (void)layoutSubviews {
    [super layoutSubviews];

    // center the image as it becomes smaller than the size of the screen
    CGSize boundsSize = self.bounds.size;
    CGRect frameToCenter = tileContainerView.frame;

    // center horizontally
    if (frameToCenter.size.width < boundsSize.width)
        frameToCenter.origin.x = (boundsSize.width - frameToCenter.size.width) / 2;
    else
        frameToCenter.origin.x = 0;

    // center vertically
    if (frameToCenter.size.height < boundsSize.height)
        frameToCenter.origin.y = (boundsSize.height - frameToCenter.size.height) / 2;
    else
        frameToCenter.origin.y = 0;

    tileContainerView.frame = frameToCenter;
}