IPhone BitmapImageRep

cocoaiphone

I have a buffer which has JPEG image data. I need to display this image in UIImageView. I need to convert this image buffer into an object of UIImage and use it as follows

NSData *data = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:appFile];
UIImage *theImage = [[UIImage alloc] initWithData:data];

I get the image displayed but with a low resolution as compared to the actual resolution. Do I need to convert it into a Bitmap first and then use it with UIImage? I don't seem to be able to use NSBitmapImageRep. Any ideas on how can this be achieved?

Best Answer

If the UIImageView frame dimensions are different than the source image dimensions, you'll get a resized version of the image. The quality can be pretty rough depending on how much of a conversion is being performed.

I found this code on the net somewhere (sorry original author - I've lost the attribution) that performs a smoother resize:

UIImage* resizedImage(UIImage *inImage, CGRect thumbRect)
{
    CGImageRef          imageRef = [inImage CGImage];
    CGImageAlphaInfo    alphaInfo = CGImageGetAlphaInfo(imageRef);

    // There's a wierdness with kCGImageAlphaNone and CGBitmapContextCreate
    // see Supported Pixel Formats in the Quartz 2D Programming Guide
    // Creating a Bitmap Graphics Context section
    // only RGB 8 bit images with alpha of kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipFirst, kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipLast, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedFirst,
    // and kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast, with a few other oddball image kinds are supported
    // The images on input here are likely to be png or jpeg files
    if (alphaInfo == kCGImageAlphaNone)
        alphaInfo = kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipLast;

    // Build a bitmap context that's the size of the thumbRect
    CGContextRef bitmap = CGBitmapContextCreate(
                                                NULL,
                                                thumbRect.size.width,       // width
                                                thumbRect.size.height,      // height
                                                CGImageGetBitsPerComponent(imageRef),   // really needs to always be 8
                                                4 * thumbRect.size.width,   // rowbytes
                                                CGImageGetColorSpace(imageRef),
                                                alphaInfo
                                                );

    // Draw into the context, this scales the image
    CGContextDrawImage(bitmap, thumbRect, imageRef);

    // Get an image from the context and a UIImage
    CGImageRef  ref = CGBitmapContextCreateImage(bitmap);
    UIImage*    result = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:ref];

    CGContextRelease(bitmap);   // ok if NULL
    CGImageRelease(ref);

    return result;
}

A little more detail...

I posted earlier this evening with a consolidation and small addition to what had been said on this page - that can be found at the bottom of this post. I am editing the post at this point, however, to post what I propose is (at least for my requirements, which include modifying pixel data) a better method, as it provides writable data (whereas, as I understand it, the method provided by previous posts and at the bottom of this post provides a read-only reference to data).

Method 1: Writable Pixel Information

I defined constants

#define RGBA        4
#define RGBA_8_BIT  8

In my UIImage subclass I declared instance variables:

size_t bytesPerRow;
size_t byteCount;
size_t pixelCount;

CGContextRef context;
CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace;

UInt8 *pixelByteData;
// A pointer to an array of RGBA bytes in memory
RPVW_RGBAPixel *pixelData;

The pixel struct (with alpha in this version)

typedef struct RGBAPixel {
    byte red;
    byte green;
    byte blue;
    byte alpha;
} RGBAPixel;

Bitmap function (returns pre-calculated RGBA; divide RGB by A to get unmodified RGB):

-(RGBAPixel*) bitmap {
    NSLog( @"Returning bitmap representation of UIImage." );
    // 8 bits each of red, green, blue, and alpha.
    [self setBytesPerRow:self.size.width * RGBA];
    [self setByteCount:bytesPerRow * self.size.height];
    [self setPixelCount:self.size.width * self.size.height];

    // Create RGB color space
    [self setColorSpace:CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB()];

    if (!colorSpace)
    {
        NSLog(@"Error allocating color space.");
        return nil;
    }

    [self setPixelData:malloc(byteCount)];

    if (!pixelData)
    {
        NSLog(@"Error allocating bitmap memory. Releasing color space.");
        CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);

        return nil;
    }

    // Create the bitmap context. 
    // Pre-multiplied RGBA, 8-bits per component. 
    // The source image format will be converted to the format specified here by CGBitmapContextCreate.
    [self setContext:CGBitmapContextCreate(
                                           (void*)pixelData,
                                           self.size.width,
                                           self.size.height,
                                           RGBA_8_BIT,
                                           bytesPerRow,
                                           colorSpace,
                                           kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast
                                           )];

    // Make sure we have our context
    if (!context)   {
        free(pixelData);
        NSLog(@"Context not created!");
    }

    // Draw the image to the bitmap context. 
    // The memory allocated for the context for rendering will then contain the raw image pixelData in the specified color space.
    CGRect rect = { { 0 , 0 }, { self.size.width, self.size.height } };

    CGContextDrawImage( context, rect, self.CGImage );

    // Now we can get a pointer to the image pixelData associated with the bitmap context.
    pixelData = (RGBAPixel*) CGBitmapContextGetData(context);

    return pixelData;
}

Read-Only Data (Previous information) - method 2:

Step 1. I declared a type for byte:

 typedef unsigned char byte;

Step 2. I declared a struct to correspond to a pixel:

 typedef struct RGBPixel{
    byte red;
    byte green;
    byte blue;  
    }   
RGBPixel;

Step 3. I subclassed UIImageView and declared (with corresponding synthesized properties):

//  Reference to Quartz CGImage for receiver (self)  
CFDataRef bitmapData;   

//  Buffer holding raw pixel data copied from Quartz CGImage held in receiver (self)    
UInt8* pixelByteData;

//  A pointer to the first pixel element in an array    
RGBPixel* pixelData;

Step 4. Subclass code I put in a method named bitmap (to return the bitmap pixel data):

//Get the bitmap data from the receiver's CGImage (see UIImage docs)  
[self setBitmapData: CGDataProviderCopyData(CGImageGetDataProvider([self CGImage]))];

//Create a buffer to store bitmap data (unitialized memory as long as the data)    
[self setPixelBitData:malloc(CFDataGetLength(bitmapData))];

//Copy image data into allocated buffer    
CFDataGetBytes(bitmapData,CFRangeMake(0,CFDataGetLength(bitmapData)),pixelByteData);

//Cast a pointer to the first element of pixelByteData    
//Essentially what we're doing is making a second pointer that divides the byteData's units differently - instead of dividing each unit as 1 byte we will divide each unit as 3 bytes (1 pixel).    
pixelData = (RGBPixel*) pixelByteData;

//Now you can access pixels by index: pixelData[ index ]    
NSLog(@"Pixel data one red (%i), green (%i), blue (%i).", pixelData[0].red, pixelData[0].green, pixelData[0].blue);

//You can determine the desired index by multiplying row * column.    
return pixelData;

Step 5. I made an accessor method:

-(RGBPixel*)pixelDataForRow:(int)row column:(int)column{
    //Return a pointer to the pixel data
    return &pixelData[row * column];           
}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ios – How to develop for iPhone using a Windows development machine

Iphone – How to get the RGB values for a pixel on an image on the iphone

A little more detail...

Read-Only Data (Previous information) - method 2:

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