How can I load images from a user's photo album on the iPhone?

Question

I'd like to randomly load images from the user's photo album, but I'd prefer not to have to access an image picker (i.e. I'd like to have the images be random background images). Does anyone know if this is possible?

(I couldn't find any references other than: UIImageWriteToSavedPhotosAlbum )

Edit: I'm trying to do this within an iPhone app. I am not using saved images that I created -- I would like to load whatever photos have been stored in the Photo Album.

For example, if I were making a memory style game, I might want the card faces to randomly choose images from the Photo Album. How might I go about that?

Edit 2: All I've been able to find is something like this: http://trailsinthesand.com/picking-images-with-the-iphone-sdk-uiimagepickercontroller/

I'd prefer not to use the UIImagePickerController, because I didn't want to have the user have to make a decision. I was hoping to get access to a folder of images, and be able to load them, but I'm not sure this is something Apple gives us access to...

Answer 1

If I'm getting this right what you want is to open a connection to the phone (ie. ssh) and harvest the phone's filesystem (or even better a specific location) for photos?

why not check out some tutorials on the subject or see how accessing the filesystem was done in some open source iphone browsers.

Answer 2

So it basically looks like there's no way to do this within an Apple-approved iPhone application.

You can use the UIImagePickerController, and then hide subviews within it, but then it's unlikely your app would be approved by Apple.

So, looks like we'll have to wait until functionality like this can be added...

Answer 3

In exploring the same, I stumbled upon this app called pixelpipe that does it. They do a nice job of showing all images in the iphone library. I am not sure how they do it, and how they got approval from apple.

Answer 4

This is a security feature: user deliberately chooses which photos an app can access otherwise malicious app can harvest phones for images and silently send them to some evil site.