How to tint an image/show a colour? - iphone

Question

2 things i want to do, which are related:
Show a block of any colour. So i could change that colour to something else at any time.
Tint a UIImage to be a different colour. An overlay of colour with alpha turned down could work here, but say it was an image which had a transparent background and didn't take up the full square of the image.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

Another option, would be to use category methods on UIImage like this...
// Tint the image, default to half transparency if given an opaque colour.
- (UIImage *)imageWithTint:(UIColor *)tintColor {
CGFloat white, alpha;
[tintColor getWhite:&white alpha:&alpha];
return [self imageWithTint:tintColor alpha:(alpha == 1.0 ? 0.5f : alpha)];
}
// Tint the image
- (UIImage *)imageWithTint:(UIColor *)tintColor alpha:(CGFloat)alpha {
// Begin drawing
CGRect aRect = CGRectMake(0.f, 0.f, self.size.width, self.size.height);
UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(aRect.size);
// Get the graphic context
CGContextRef c = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
// Converting a UIImage to a CGImage flips the image,
// so apply a upside-down translation
CGContextTranslateCTM(c, 0, self.size.height);
CGContextScaleCTM(c, 1.0, -1.0);
// Draw the image
[self drawInRect:aRect];
// Set the fill color space
CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
CGContextSetFillColorSpace(c, colorSpace);
// Set the mask to only tint non-transparent pixels
CGContextClipToMask(c, aRect, self.CGImage);
// Set the fill color
CGContextSetFillColorWithColor(c, [tintColor colorWithAlphaComponent:alpha].CGColor);
UIRectFillUsingBlendMode(aRect, kCGBlendModeColor);
UIImage *img = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
// Release memory
CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);
return img;
}

Answer 2

The first one is easy. Make a new UIView and set its background color to whatever color you’d like.
The second is more difficult. As you mentioned, you can put a new view on top of it with transparency turned down, but to get it to clip in the same places, you’d want to use a mask. Something like this:
UIImage *myImage = [UIImage imageNamed:#"foo.png"];
UIImageView *originalImageView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:myImage];
[originalImageView setFrame:CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, 100.0f, 100.0f)];
[parentView addSubview:originalImageView];
UIView *overlay = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:[originalImageView frame]];
UIImageView *maskImageView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:myImage];
[maskImageView setFrame:[overlay bounds]];
[[overlay layer] setMask:[maskImageView layer]];
[overlay setBackgroundColor:[UIColor redColor]];
[parentView addSubview:overlay];
Keep in mind you’ll have to #import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h> in the implementation file.

Answer 3

Here is another way to implement image tinting, especially if you are already using QuartzCore for something else.
Import QuartzCore:
#import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h>
Create transparent CALayer and add it as a sublayer for the image you want to tint:
CALayer *sublayer = [CALayer layer];
[sublayer setBackgroundColor:[UIColor whiteColor].CGColor];
[sublayer setOpacity:0.3];
[sublayer setFrame:toBeTintedImage.frame];
[toBeTintedImage.layer addSublayer:sublayer];
Add QuartzCore to your projects Framework list (if it isn't already there), otherwise you'll get compiler errors like this:
Undefined symbols for architecture i386: "_OBJC_CLASS_$_CALayer"

Answer 4

An easy way to achieve 1 is to create a UILabel or even a UIView and change the backgroundColor as you like.
There is a way to multiply colours instead of just overlaying them, and that should work for 2. See this tutorial.

Answer 5

Try this
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
UIView* maskedView = [self filledViewForPNG:[UIImage imageNamed:#"mask_effect.png"]
mask:[UIImage imageNamed:#"mask_image.png"]
maskColor:[UIColor colorWithRed:.6 green:.2 blue:.7 alpha:1]];
[self.view addSubview:maskedView];
}
-(UIView*)filledViewForPNG:(UIImage*)image mask:(UIImage*)maskImage maskColor:(UIColor*)maskColor
{
UIImageView *pngImageView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:image];
UIImageView *maskImageView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:maskImage];
CGRect bounds;
if (image) {
bounds = pngImageView.bounds;
}
else
{
bounds = maskImageView.bounds;
}
UIView* parentView = [[UIView alloc]initWithFrame:bounds];
[parentView setAutoresizesSubviews:YES];
[parentView setClipsToBounds:YES];
UIView *overlay = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:bounds];
[[overlay layer] setMask:[maskImageView layer]];
[overlay setBackgroundColor:maskColor];
[parentView addSubview:overlay];
[parentView addSubview:pngImageView];
return parentView;
}