How would I tint an image programatically on the iPhone?

Answer 1

The only thing I can think of would be to create a rectangular mostly transparent view with the desired color and lay it over your image view by adding it as a subview. I'm not sure if this will really tint the image in the way you imagine though, I'm not sure how you would hack into an image and selectively replace certain colors with others... sounds pretty ambitious to me.

For example:

UIImageView *yourPicture = (however you grab the image);
UIView *colorBlock = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:yourPicture.frame];
//Replace R G B and A with values from 0 - 1 based on your color and transparency
colorBlock.backgroundColor = [UIColor colorWithRed:R green:G blue:B alpha:A];
[yourPicture addSubView:colorBlock];

Documentation for UIColor:

colorWithRed:green:blue:alpha:

Creates and returns a color object using the specified opacity and RGB component values.

+ (UIColor *)colorWithRed:(CGFloat)red green:(CGFloat)green blue:(CGFloat)blue alpha:(CGFloat)alpha

Parameters

red    - The red component of the color object, specified as a value from 0.0 to 1.0.

green  - The green component of the color object, specified as a value from 0.0 to 1.0.

blue   - The blue component of the color object, specified as a value from 0.0 to 1.0.



alpha  - The opacity value of the color object, specified as a value from 0.0 to 1.0.

Return Value

The color object. The color information represented by this object is in the device RGB colorspace.

Answer 2

First you'll want to subclass UIImageView and override the drawRect method. Your class needs a UIColor property (let's call it overlayColor) to hold the blend color and a custom setter that forces a redraw when the color changes. Something like this:

- (void) setOverlayColor:(UIColor *)newColor {
   if (overlayColor)
     [overlayColor release];

   overlayColor = [newColor retain];
   [self setNeedsDisplay]; // fires off drawRect each time color changes
}

In the drawRect method you'll want to draw the image first then overlay it with a rectangle filled with the color you want along with the proper blending mode, something like this:

- (void) drawRect:(CGRect)area
{
  CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
  CGContextSaveGState(context);

  // Draw picture first
  //
  CGContextDrawImage(context, self.frame, self.image.CGImage);

  // Blend mode could be any of CGBlendMode values. Now draw filled rectangle
  // over top of image.
  //
  CGContextSetBlendMode (context, kCGBlendModeMultiply);
  CGContextSetFillColor(context, CGColorGetComponents(self.overlayColor.CGColor));   
  CGContextFillRect (context, self.bounds);
  CGContextRestoreGState(context);
}

Ordinarily to optimize the drawing you would restrict the actual drawing to only the area passed in to drawRect, but since the background image has to be redrawn each time the color changes it's likely the whole thing will need refreshing.

To use it create an instance of the object then set the image property (inherited from UIImageView) to the picture and overlayColor to a UIColor value (the blend levels can be adjusted by changing the alpha value of the color you pass down).

Answer 3

Also you might want to consider caching the composited image for performance and just rendering it in drawRect:, then updated it if a dirty flag is indeed dirty. While you might be changing it often, there may be cases where draws are coming in and you're not dirty, so you can simply refresh from the cache. If memory is more of an issue than performance, you can ignore this :)

Answer 4

This could be very useful: PhotoshopFramework is one powerful library to manipulate images on Objective-C. This was developed to bring the same functionalities that Adobe Photoshop users are familiar. Examples: Set colors using RGB 0-255, apply blend filers, transformations...

Is open source, here is the project link: https://sourceforge.net/projects/photoshopframew/

Answer 5

Just a quick clarification (after some research on this topic)... the apple docs here, clearly state that:

UIImageView will not call drawRect: a subclass. If your subclass needs custom drawing code, it is recommended you use UIView as the base class.

so don't even waste any time attempting to override that method in a UIImageView subclass . . . start with UIView instead.