How to efficiently and fast blur an image on the iPhone? - iphone

Question

If I have a UIImage or CGContextRef or the pure bitmap data (direct access to decompressed ARGB-8 pixels), what's my best option to blur an image with radius 10 pixels as fast as possible?

Answer 1

I've implemented a stackBlur algorithm for iOS, which is close to GaussianBlur but very fast:
https://github.com/tomsoft1/StackBluriOS
Check for instance here:
Blur an UIImage on change of slider

Answer 2

Either use a stack blur, a box blur or use the OpenGL texture blur (google the first two, and check the Apple dev samples for the latter).

Answer 3

https://github.com/rnystrom/RNBlurModalView
-(UIImage *)boxblurImageWithBlur:(CGFloat)blur bluringImage : (UIImage *) image
{
int boxSize = (int)(blur * 40);
boxSize = boxSize - (boxSize % 2) + 1;
CGImageRef img = image.CGImage;
enter code here
vImage_Buffer inBuffer, outBuffer;
vImage_Error error;
void *pixelBuffer;
//create vImage_Buffer with data from CGImageRef
CGDataProviderRef inProvider = CGImageGetDataProvider(img);
CFDataRef inBitmapData = CGDataProviderCopyData(inProvider);
inBuffer.width = CGImageGetWidth(img);
inBuffer.height = CGImageGetHeight(img);
inBuffer.rowBytes = CGImageGetBytesPerRow(img);
inBuffer.data = (void*)CFDataGetBytePtr(inBitmapData);
//create vImage_Buffer for output
pixelBuffer = malloc(CGImageGetBytesPerRow(img) * CGImageGetHeight(img));
if(pixelBuffer == NULL)
NSLog(#"No pixelbuffer");
outBuffer.data = pixelBuffer;
outBuffer.width = CGImageGetWidth(img);
outBuffer.height = CGImageGetHeight(img);
outBuffer.rowBytes = CGImageGetBytesPerRow(img);
// Create a third buffer for intermediate processing
void *pixelBuffer2 = malloc(CGImageGetBytesPerRow(img) * CGImageGetHeight(img));
vImage_Buffer outBuffer2;
outBuffer2.data = pixelBuffer2;
outBuffer2.width = CGImageGetWidth(img);
outBuffer2.height = CGImageGetHeight(img);
outBuffer2.rowBytes = CGImageGetBytesPerRow(img);
//perform convolution
error = vImageBoxConvolve_ARGB8888(&inBuffer, &outBuffer2, NULL, 0, 0, boxSize, boxSize, NULL, kvImageEdgeExtend);
error = vImageBoxConvolve_ARGB8888(&outBuffer2, &inBuffer, NULL, 0, 0, boxSize, boxSize, NULL, kvImageEdgeExtend);
error = vImageBoxConvolve_ARGB8888(&inBuffer, &outBuffer, NULL, 0, 0, boxSize, boxSize, NULL, kvImageEdgeExtend);
if (error) {
NSLog(#"error from convolution %ld", error);
}
CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
CGContextRef ctx = CGBitmapContextCreate(outBuffer.data,
outBuffer.width,
outBuffer.height,
8,
outBuffer.rowBytes,
colorSpace,
kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipLast);
CGImageRef imageRef = CGBitmapContextCreateImage (ctx);
UIImage *returnImage = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:imageRef];
//clean up
CGContextRelease(ctx);
CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);
free(pixelBuffer);
CFRelease(inBitmapData);
CGImageRelease(imageRef);
return returnImage;
}