I've tried some code from each of these questions:
How to make one color transparent on a UIImage?
How to mask a UIImage so that white becomes transparent on iphone?
but have come up unsuccessful, unfortunately working with Core Graphics and images is not my strong suit.
How would I go about accessing a UIImage's raw data and changing the white pixels to clear?
How would I go about accessing a UIImage's raw data …?
Look at the documentation.
You'll find that there is no way to get the raw data behind a UIImage. The closest you can get is a CGImage. That will let you get its data provider, which you can ask for a copy of the raw data.
The problem with that solution is that you need to handle every possible configuration (RGBA, ARGB, RGB_, _RGB, RGB, 8-bpc, 16-bpc, etc.) that CGImage supports. That's a lot of work. If you don't do it, then someday, you'll get surprised by an image that somehow doesn't work with your code, or by an OS upgrade changing how the CGImage gets created.
The CGImageCreateWithMaskingColors function, suggested on one of the other questions you linked to, is the correct solution.
One thing that's tripping you up is that the values shown in the accepted answer on that question are generally bogus: They're out of range. The Quartz 2D Programming Guide has more details in at least two.places.
I also argue against including that answer's createMask: method, since it doesn't do what it says it does and is barely useful at all (it's only worth having if the source image may be CMYK, but how likely is that on an iPhone app?). Skip it and create the mask image from the UIImage's CGImage directly.
That answer will probably work just fine once you fix those two problems.
Related
I am using AVFoundation to take pictures instead of UIImagePicker due to how customizable the user interface presented to the user can be. When using it the aspect ratio that the picture is saved as is the same as the iPhone's video feed. What I want to happen is to have the pictures saved in the same aspect ratio as normal pictures are.
The way that I am currently approaching this is to overlay a black bar in the excess preview display and then just crop the photo after saving it as an image.
However, this feels very crude. I assume that it is a common thing to use the AVFoundation as a way of taking photos and so I assume I must be missing something!
I have used this example code. And I have read through the AVFoundation documentation but can only assume that I am missing a function. I have also read through similar questions to this which describe the process by which I might go about cropping images, but that isn't really my concern.
On the other hand, if there is no standard way to do this, please do let me know so that I can stop worrying that I am approaching it in a convoluted way.
Also, I am using Objective-C so if answers contain code, please could you use the same language?
How can I 'binarize' an NSImage (or an NSBitmapImageRep if that's a better approach)?
I understand the concept of thresholding an image to turn it into a 1-bit image. I don't know, though, whether this are already methods/functions to do this to an NSImage, or whether I must manually iterate over the pixels, and deal with each pixel.
There are Core Image filters designed for this; check out the answer to this question.
In iOS, I'd like to have a series of items in "space" similar to the way Time Machine works. The "space" would be navigated by a scroll bar like feature on the side of the page. So if the person scrolls up, it would essentially zoom in in the space and objects that were further away will be closer to the reference point. If one zooms out, then those objects will fade into the back and whatever is behind the frame of refrence will come into view. Kind of like this.
I'm open to a variety of solutions. I imagine there's a relatively easy solution within openGL, I just don't know where to begin.
Check out Nick Lockwood's iCarousel on github. It's a very good component. The example code he provides uses a custom carousel style very much like what you describe. You should get there with just a few tweaks.
As you said, in OpenGL(ES) is relatively easy to accomplish what you ask, however it may not be equally easy to explain it to someone that is not confident with OpenGL :)
First of all, I may suggest you to take a look at The Red Book, the reference guide to OpenGL, or at the OpenGL Wiki.
To begin, you may do some practice using GLUT; it will help you taking confidence with OpenGL, providing some high-level API that will let you skip the boring side of setting up an OpenGL context, letting you go directly to the drawing part.
OpenGL ES is a subset of OpenGL, so essentially has the same structure. Once you understood how to use OpenGL shouldn't be so difficult to use OpenGL ES. Of course Apple documentation is a very important resource.
Now that you know a lot of stuff about OpenGL you should be able to easily understand how your program should be structured.
You may, for example, keep your view point fixed and translate the world (or viceversa). There is not (of course) a universal solution, especially because the only thing that matters is the final result.
Another solution (maybe equally good, it depends on your needs), may be to simply scale up and down images (representing the objects of your world) to simulate the movement through the object itself.
For example you may use an array to store all of your images and use a slider to set (increase/decrease) the dimension of your image. Once the image becomes too large for the display you may gradually decrease alpha, so that the image behind will slowly appear. Take a look at UIImageView reference, it contains all the API's you need for it.
This may lead you to the loss of 3-dimensionality, but it's probably a simpler/faster solution than learn OpenGL.
I am looking for a way to, in Objective-C, create a PNG from several smaller PNGs based on how the user sets things up. Is this possible using existing Apple classes, or do I need to use a 3rd party library? If 3rd party code is needed, can anyone recommend a good library? The simpler the better - simple filters (such as darkening/lightening the image) would be nice but not required.
Here is some pseudo-code, to give you a better idea of what I am looking for:
image = [myImageLibrary imageWithHeight:1024 width:768];
[image addImage:#"background.png" atX:0 andY:0 withRotation:0];
[image addImage:#"image2.png" atX:100 andY:200 withRotation:90];
[image saveAtLocation:#"output.png"];
At output.png we see image2.png placed on top of background.png and rotated 90 degrees
P.S. - I am sorry if this seems to be a duplicate of another question, I just have not found an answer that works for what I am trying to do.
Have you read the "Creating and Drawing Images" section of the Drawing and Printing Guide for iOS and the UIImage Class Reference docs?
What you're after is perfectly possible - with a well built class you could pretty much use that pseudo code as-is.
As a starter for ten, you could:
Create your own graphics context via UIGraphicsBeginImageContext.
Draw into that via the drawAtPoint: method of the UIImage class
Save the resultant image data out via UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext.
In terms of steps 1 and 3, see the UIKit Function Reference for more info. Additionally, the imageWithCGImage:scale:orientation: method of the UIImage class may prove useful for performing transformations, etc. as a part of step 2.
You'll want to look at CGContextDrawImage to draw your images, using a custom bitmap context, and then save it out using UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext(). The rotation can be done by applying CGAffineTransforms to your CGContext.
More information on Core Graphics here:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/GraphicsImaging/Conceptual/drawingwithquartz2d/Introduction/Introduction.html
If i wanted to crop an image in VB.net, how would I go about doing it? I am trying to let the user drag out the box they want (system.drawing.rectangle), and it will automatically remove the edges surrounding the box.
My first problem is primarily the fact that I cannot make the system.drawing.rectangle visible. It is not displaying at all, I am setting its location and height programmatically, but nothing is showing up. I know there is probably something fairly obvious I am missing...but I cannot seem to find it.
My larger issue, however, lies with the cropping itself. I cannot find any crop methods, at all. Is there a hidden one I am missing? Or must I code it myself? How would I go about doing this? It ought to be able to output to a bitmap image object.
Thanks for the help, I am surprised this hasn't been asked on here before....
Regarding your first problem: a Rectangle isn't by itself visible. You have to draw it on your canvas using the Graphics object's DrawRectangle(...) method. For drawing a selection tool, you'll want to set your Pen object's DashCap and DashPattern properties.
To "crop" an image, you basically want to take the portion of a larger image delineated by a smaller Rectangle, and turn it into a new Bitmap. This can be done using one of the 30 overloads of the Graphics object's DrawImage(...) method. You can either keep the cropped portion in its original dimensions (resulting in a smaller Bitmap than your original), or you can "blow it up" to something like the original image's size. If you do the latter approach, it is usually a good idea to set your Graphics object's InterpolationMode property to HighQualityBicubic (I think that's the one, anyway), since the default InterpolationMode is pretty crappy.
There are a number of different ways of rendering images in .Net - it might help if you posted some of your code, along with an explanation of the exact problems you're running into.
Here is another answer with a link to a sample app (and source code in C#, sorry) that may help you get started.
There are a number of articles on these topics on CodeProject:
Pick your favorite flavor (though I encourage you to check out the C# projects - it shouldn't be too hard to convert).
VB
Image Cropping with Image Resizing Using vb.net
C#
Cropping Images
An Easy to Use Image Resizing and Cropping Control
Image Processing using C# (see the Cropping section - I was able to use this code in one of my projects)
WPF/C#
WPF Interactive Image Cropping Control
A Photoshop-like Cropping Adorner for WPF