Objective C - save UIImage as a BMP file - objective-c

Question

Similar questions have been asked but they always contain the answer "use UIImagePNGRepresentation or UIImageJPEGRepresentation" which will not work for me. I need to save the file as a bitmap.
From my understanding, the UIImage data is already a bitmap. In which case I shouldn't have to create a bitmap. Or do I? I found someone who posted this question but I'm unsure what exactly the answer is, as it is not clear to me. I've even gone so far as to create a char pointer array but I still don't know how to save it as a bitmap. Is there anybody out there who can help me understand how to save the UIImage as a bitmap? Or tell me the steps and I'll research the steps.
Thank you.
EDIT:
I found this tutorial (with code) for converting the image to a bitmap but the bitmap returned is an unsigned char *. Either I'm on the right path or I'm going down in the wrong direction. So now I'm going to see if I can write out the unsigned char * to a .bmp file.

Answer 1

Below is the category that I have pieced together for UIImage that lets me access the raw BGRA data as well as data ready to be written to disk with an appropriate bitmap header.
#interface UIImage (BitmapData)
- (NSData *)bitmapData;
- (NSData *)bitmapFileHeaderData;
- (NSData *)bitmapDataWithFileHeader;
#end
# pragma pack(push, 1)
typedef struct s_bitmap_header
{
// Bitmap file header
UInt16 fileType;
UInt32 fileSize;
UInt16 reserved1;
UInt16 reserved2;
UInt32 bitmapOffset;
// DIB Header
UInt32 headerSize;
UInt32 width;
UInt32 height;
UInt16 colorPlanes;
UInt16 bitsPerPixel;
UInt32 compression;
UInt32 bitmapSize;
UInt32 horizontalResolution;
UInt32 verticalResolution;
UInt32 colorsUsed;
UInt32 colorsImportant;
} t_bitmap_header;
#pragma pack(pop)
#implementation UIImage (BitmapData)
- (NSData *)bitmapData
{
NSData *bitmapData = nil;
CGImageRef image = self.CGImage;
CGContextRef context = NULL;
CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace;
UInt8 *rawData;
size_t bitsPerPixel = 32;
size_t bitsPerComponent = 8;
size_t bytesPerPixel = bitsPerPixel / bitsPerComponent;
size_t width = CGImageGetWidth(image);
size_t height = CGImageGetHeight(image);
size_t bytesPerRow = width * bytesPerPixel;
size_t bufferLength = bytesPerRow * height;
colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
if (colorSpace)
{
// Allocate memory for raw image data
rawData = (UInt8 *)calloc(bufferLength, sizeof(UInt8));
if (rawData)
{
CGBitmapInfo bitmapInfo = kCGBitmapByteOrder32Little | kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedFirst;
context = CGBitmapContextCreate(rawData,
width,
height,
bitsPerComponent,
bytesPerRow,
colorSpace,
bitmapInfo);
if (context)
{
CGRect rect = CGRectMake(0, 0, width, height);
CGContextTranslateCTM(context, 0, height);
CGContextScaleCTM(context, 1.0, -1.0);
CGContextDrawImage(context, rect, image);
bitmapData = [NSData dataWithBytes:rawData length:bufferLength];
CGContextRelease(context);
}
free(rawData);
}
CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);
}
return bitmapData;
}
- (NSData *)bitmapFileHeaderData
{
CGImageRef image = self.CGImage;
UInt32 width = (UInt32)CGImageGetWidth(image);
UInt32 height = (UInt32)CGImageGetHeight(image);
t_bitmap_header header;
header.fileType = 0x4D42;
header.fileSize = (height * width * 4) + 54;
header.reserved1 = 0x0000;
header.reserved2 = 0x0000;
header.bitmapOffset = 0x00000036;
header.headerSize = 0x00000028;
header.width = width;
header.height = height;
header.colorPlanes = 0x0001;
header.bitsPerPixel = 0x0020;
header.compression = 0x00000000;
header.bitmapSize = height * width * 4;
header.horizontalResolution = 0x00000B13;
header.verticalResolution = 0x00000B13;
header.colorsUsed = 0x00000000;
header.colorsImportant = 0x00000000;
return [NSData dataWithBytes:&header length:sizeof(t_bitmap_header)];
}
- (NSData *)bitmapDataWithFileHeader
{
NSMutableData *data = [NSMutableData dataWithData:[self bitmapFileHeaderData]];
[data appendData:[self bitmapData]];
return [NSData dataWithData:data];
}
#end