I have a collection of UIImageViews, made from PNGs with transparency.
I want to be able to overlap these images on top of each other, but only show where they overlap, not the entire image. So image B is placed over image A, but I only want to display image B where image A is not transparent.
The UIImageViews also move around.
So effectively I want to use one PNG to mask another PNG, using Objective C.
Can this be done?
I don't know if this is the ideal way to accomplish this, but you could do this by using a combination of masking and cropping.
So, for example, you check to see if Image A is transparent, if it is, perform some masking on the two images. Masking Tutorial Here
After you've masked the images, perform a cropping operation based on the intersecting coordinates. Check the Second Answer Here
In the event that that Image A is not transparent, just perform the cropping operation without masking the object. Not sure if this will help, but I figure it will give you a start!
Related
I've been searching around the web about how to do this and I know that it needs to be done with OpenCV. The problem is that all the tutorials and examples that I find are for separated shapes detection or template matching.
What I need is a way to detect the contents between 3 circles (which can be a photo or something else). From what I searched, its not to difficult to find the circles with the camera using contours but, how do I extract what is between them? The circles work like a pattern on the image to grab what is "inside the pattern".
Do I need to use the contours of each circle and measure the distance between them to grab my contents? If so, what if the image is a bit rotated/distorted on the camera?
I'm using Xamarin.iOS for this but from what I already saw, I believe I need to go native for this and any Objective C example is welcome too.
EDIT
Imagining that the image captured by the camera is this:
What I want is to match the 3 circles and get the following part of the image as result:
Since the images come from the camera, they can be rotated or scaled up/down.
The warpAffine function will let you map the desired area of the source image to a destination image, performing cropping, rotation and scaling in a single go.
Talking about rotation and scaling seem to indicate that you want to extract a rectangle of a given aspect ratio, hence perform a similarity transform. To define such a transform, three points are too much, two suffice. The construction of the affine matrix is a little tricky.
My problem is three-fold. I'm going to try to explain as detailed as I can, because I've asked this question before and haven't gotten any clear answers.
What I'm Trying to Do:
I have diagonally shaped images, that I'm trying to make clickable, so I separated them out of the background image. They were originally one image, but I've cut out several pieces of the image and I want to align them identically to how they were in the original image. This might not the best method for what I am trying to achieve, and if there is a better way to make non-square areas of an image clickable, that would solve all of these problems. If not, here is my problem. The problem is, as soon as I align them in XML, I boot them up on an Android emulator or my phone, and they are aligned differently on both, differently than the preview and from each other.
Below is my example, and I'll try to explain what I mean.
The black and white grid is my background. The brown, red, and yellow lines are separate images. I don't want to just combine them with the background, because I need those lines to be clickable. I'd set a button behind them, but they are diagonally shaped and I need the entire shape to be clickable. However, they have to be EXACTLY where they are in the background, aligned specifically as they are to the background. The problem is, as soon as I load it on another device, it scales, and everything misaligns.
It also misaligns depending the device, so I presume it's because it's scaling the different parts differently.
I need a way to align it the way I want it, and have each image scale together.
How I've Been Trying This So Far:
Initially, I tried just using XML. And herein was my first problem. My background image is 1920x1080. It loads on the emulator without a problem. However, if I try to load it on my phone, I get the following error:
OpenGLRenderer: Bitmap too large to be uploaded into a texture (5760x3240, max=4096x4096)
So that leads to my first question. Why is my 1920x1080 trying to load as 5760x3240?!
I bypassed this, by using Picasso to scale the image to 1920x1080. As a sidenote, in addition to programmatically loading the image, I also am removing the title bar. Here is my OnCreate:
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
this.requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE);
this.getWindow().setFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN, WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main_layout);
Picasso.with(this).load(R.drawable.backgroundimage).resize(1920,1080).into((ImageView)findViewById(R.id.background));
On the XML side, I've tried all sorts of different things. Relative layouts, linear layouts, frame layouts...None seem to scale the separate imageviews the same.
Which leads to my second question.
How do I scale two differently sized imageviews together, so that they maintain their alignment on different sized devices?
My second imageview is 198x547(this would be the equivalent of one of the squiggly lines in the example images) and even setting that in Picasso does not maintain my alignment. In fact, that doesn't seem to work at all, since I have to scale it differently to even match the alignment I have in the original image.
Summary Questions
I need a diagonally shaped portion of an image to be clickable. Is cutting the shape out as a separate image the appropriate method for doing so? If not, how do I make such a specific, non-square area of an image clickable?
I need specific alignments to scale together. Why aren't they?
Why does my png file upscale itself?
I'm trying to move an image, and to keep his transparency. To do that, I have a transparent image, and I convert it into a video with Imagesource. I overlay it to a video made by a completely transparent image. Finally, I want the resultant video to be transparent, and for that I need to merge the alpha chanel of the both videos. Now I don't see how to do that (I encounter the MergeRGB but it doensn't work, I also encounter the Mask method, but I don't want mask of any of my video, I don't want mask of the image I want to move, I want the mask of the moved image). The best I done wast to keep mask of the video.
Please, one of you know how to merge alpha channel so the result will be the alpha channel of the moved image? This is the code I use:
clip1 = ImageSource("PNG_transparency_demonstration_1.png", end=239, fps=24, pixel_type="RGB32").ConvertToRGB32()
clip1trans = ImageSource("fond_transparent_720.png", end=10, fps=24, pixel_type="RGB32").ConvertToRGB32()
clip1 = Overlay(clip1trans, clip1, x=100, y=100, mask=clip1.ShowAlpha())
clip1
The solution I used was wrong. Overlay is a method which need a mask if you want to use one, but it doesn't conserve it. The one which is good here is the Layer function.
So I use Layer function and the result is a moved transparent image.
I have been looking for the solution on the web for a long time. Most tutorials are fairly simple about adding shadow to a UIView. I also noticed that if we add a shadow to an UIImageView. The shadow shape could perfectly fit the shape of the content image if the image itself has alpha channel in it. Say for example, if the image is an animal with transparent background, the shadow shape is also the same as that animal (not a rectangle shadow as same as UIImageView frame).
But these are not enough. What I need to do is to add some changes to the shadow so it may have some rotation angle and compressed (squeezed or shift) effect so that looks like the sunlight comes from a certain spot.
To demonstrate what I need, I upload 2 images below, which I captured from the Google Map App created by Apple. You can imagine the Annotation Pin is an image which has the Pin shape, so the shadow is also "pin shaped", but it is not simply "offset" with a CGSize, you can see the top of the shadow is shifted right about 35 degrees and slightly squeezed the height.
When we tap and hold and pin, the shadow is also animated away from the pin, so I believe that such shadow can be made programmably.
The best shadow tutorial I can found so far is http://nachbaur.com/blog/fun-shadow-effects-using-custom-calayer-shadowpaths But unfortunately, that cannot make this effect.
If anyone know the answer or know any better words to search for, please let me know. Thank you.
(Please note that the shape of the image is dynamic in the App, so using any tool like Photoshop to pre-render the shadow is not an option.)
In order to create dynamic effects like this, you have to use Core Graphics. It's incredibly powerful once you know how to use it. Basically you need to set a skew transform on the context, set up a shadow and draw the image. You will probably have to use transparency layers as well.
It doesn't sound like you can use CALayer shadows, since that is meant to solve a specific use-case. The approach Apple takes with the pin marks on the map is to have two separate images that are created ahead of time (e.g. in Photoshop) and they position them within the map relative to a reference point.
If you really do need to do this at run-time, it should still be possible by using either Core Graphics or ImageKit. To get a blurred shadow appearance, you can use the kCICategoryBlur CIFilter. You can then convert the image to grayscale. And to get that compressed look you just need to resize and skew the image.
Once you have two separate images, you can either take the CGImageRef for the shadow image and can set that as the content of another sublayer, or you can add it as a separate view.
If you know what all the shapes are, you could just render a shadow image in Photoshop or something.
I have a small UIImage, I want to make it become solid at the center, and transparent gradually forward to the border ? Anyone has a good idea on this?
Thanks so much !
At least two of the ways you could accomplish this are:
Create a series of images with the varying opacity in them. Then animate the UIImage by showing them in sequence.
Use a similar technique but use mask images. This involves using a series of images as a mask for your original image. Then animate the UIImage by redrawing it repeatedly using a different mask image each time to achieve the effect you want. See CALayer mask.
The second may be preferred because it will work with any image and allows you to change the image without having to generate the animation for it or load the image dynamically.