UIButton only background slightly transparent - iphone

Is it possible to make just the background semi transparent? If I change the alpha it changes the title and the boarder. I can change the titleLabel.alpha property but it won't go above the buttons Alpha, only below it.
I know I can make a custom one but thought there would be an easier way

Render a blank button with something like this:
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(size,0,0);
[button.layer renderInContext:UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()];
UIImage * img = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
From there, it's not hard to halve the alpha (fill it with a 50% opaque rect in "DestOver" blend mode before pulling the image out?). Then set it as the background for a custom button.
Icky. Oh well.
Alternatively, you can modify the view in the view hierarchy directly; not recommended, since it tends to break across OS releases.

Related

UIImage Not Transparent

I am trying to make a view that lets a user draw with their finger. I have a png made in Pixelmator of the brush. My drawRect: method looks like this:
- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect
{
NSAssert(brush != nil, #"");
for (UITouch *touch in touchesNeedingDrawing)
{
//Draw the touch
[brush drawInRect:CGRectWithPoints([touch locationInView:self], [touch previousLocationInView:self]) blendMode:0 alpha:1];
}
[touchesNeedingDrawing removeAllObjects];
}
The brush image is a png with transparency, but when I run the app, there is no transparency. Does anyone know why, and how to fix it?
Edit:
I discovered that the image is transparent, but when I call drawInRect, the image draws the transparent pixels as the background color of the view. Is there a CGBlendMode I can use to fix this?
Solution is very simple, testes on my own project. In class which you updated with custom - (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect set in -(id)init background color for self
[self setBackgroundColor:[UIColor clearColor]];
And thats all. Tested on my project.
It seems like it could be taking the current fill color of the context.
Try setting the fill color for the context with CGContextSetFillColorWithColor() to [UIColor clearColor].CGColor
If that doesn't work, the only other solution that is simple and shouldn't have a performance hit is to have 2 views:
Background View - This will be view that has the proper background color or image
Overlay View - This view will detect the touches etc and then draw all of the brush strokes on top. The background color of this view can then be [UIColor clearColor] so when you draw the brush images, the alpha will be filled with [UIColor clearColor]. Basically the same view you have now, just with a clear background.
Note: You shouldn't need to mess with the blend mode to make this work. You should be able to use the default drawInRect: method
Is the brush png loaded to an imageView? That is, the variable brush is an object of UIImageView, isn't it?
If so, perhaps simple
brush.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
will help
i think you should try destination out blend mode: kCGBlendModeDestinationOut.
You could also draw at point instead draw in rect:
[brush drawAtPoint:[touch locationInView:self] blendMode:kCGBlendModeDestinationOut alpha:1]
A possible issue is that you are setting the blendMode to 0. I suggest using the -drawInRect: method without a blend mode. The issue may also be that your view has a black background, but that is doubtful. I would also suggest attempting to display the UIImage in a UIImageView as a test. The issue may be related to the way that PixelMator exports images.
Your problem is a fundamental misconception of how drawRect: actually works. Every time you draw something into the current graphics context, everything that was there previously will be cleared (so that only the backgroundColor remains).
Since you're only drawing the current touch(es) (touchesNeedingDrawing is emptied), there's nothing under the rectangle you're filling that could show the transparency of the image you're drawing, so the background color shows through.
You basically have two options to resolve this:
1) Keep all touches that contribute to the drawing around (don't empty the touchesNeedingDrawing array) and redraw all of them every time – this is going to be easy but quite slow.
2) Draw into a buffer of some kind (e.g. a UIImage, using UIGraphicsBeginImageContext etc.). Every time your drawing changes, create a new buffer. Draw the old buffer into the new buffer and the images for the new stroke on top of it.

UIImageView not showing the background View if the image has transparent regions

I have a UIView has some labels and buttons on it.
Next I also have a image which has a square area that is transparent, now
if I create a UIImageView and add this image which has transparent regions I am not able to see the background view (which has buttons and labels) through this transparent image.
If I play with the alpha value that doesn't work as intended which is to see the transparent regions exactly as it would have appeared on the UIView which has the labels and buttons.
UIImage* image = [UIImage imageNamed:#"TI1.jpg"];
UIImageView* imageView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:image];
[self.view addSubview:imageView];
Also I would be interested to know if there is other way to achieve what I am trying to achieve.
Basically I want to highlight a certain area of the view which has buttons/labels and make the rest of the area greyed out. My idea was to have this UIImageView with transparent regions in image to achieve that.
Thanks
Ankur
Try setting imageView.opaque = NO;
UIImageView inherits from UIView. According to that class's docs:
This property provides a hint to the drawing system as to how it
should treat the view. If set to YES, the drawing system treats the
view as fully opaque, which allows the drawing system to optimize some
drawing operations and improve performance. If set to NO, the drawing
system composites the view normally with other content. The default
value of this property is YES.
Also, not sure that JPG even supports transparency, so try exporting the image as a PNG to ensure you get the results you're looking for.

How do I set a UIView image UIImageView to the background?

I have a custom view for which I've (in the XIB) created a UIImageView as a subview. How can I make the image view appear in the background? (i.e. so that in the custom view I can create the hands of a clock that will appear over the top)
Do I need to make my background image have alpha areas for transparency? (if I have the terms correct) Or is it OK to have an image with it's background just set to white or black or whatever it needs to be (on the basis it will be in the background so this will be ok)
You can't: views are composited on top of their superviews, which means if your custom view is drawing in -drawRect:, it will always appear under the UIImageView.
The easiest way to achieve the effect you're looking for is to put the image view under your custom view in IB.
Background images generally do not need to have transparency (and there's a slight speedup if the PNG has no alpha channel).
An alternate approach to using UIImageView objects if you are drawing the rest of stuff in drawRect: is to use the image directly. Draw the image in drawRect: before you do any of the drawing.
Example
- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect {
[backgroundImage drawInRect:rect];
/* Do rest of your drawing */
}
Now this is only if you are using a complex image. If it is a texture, you would rather use UIColor's colorWithPatternImage: method to get a color from the UIImage object and set your custom view's backgroundColor. Remember that using the colorWithPatternImage: will not scale the image while drawing and will tile if the source image is smaller the frame of the view.

How to erase particular portion without effecting other part in UIImageView?

I have one UIView with an UIImageview in which i have an image downloaded from web service. Now i try to draw with drawRect: in it. I want to erase part of my drawing same as like eraser without effecting background image downloaded from web service.
So how can i do that?
Thanks
If you simply want to "replace" part of the UIImageView with rendered primitives, rather than editing the image data, just place a UIView with a [UIColor clearColor] background color on top of the UIImageView and draw into that overlay UIView with a non-transparent color.
I don't think your looking at it the right way.
How I would do this is:
1) get the bitmap in the UIImageView
2) change the pixels/areas that you want to change
3) set the altered bitmap in your view

How can I set a background image for a UILabel and adjust its alpha without changing the transparency of the text?

How can I create a UILabel with a background image and adjust the transparency (alpha channel) of the background image without changing the transparency of the text?
If there's no easy way to accomplish this within the UILabel object by itself, what about creating a custom UIView object that's composed of a UIImageView and a UILabel, which would allow me to adjust the alpha channel of the image independently of the UILabel's alpha channel? Is that more complicated than it needs to be?
Thanks so much for your wisdom!
A Google codesearch for UIImage, alpha and CGImageRef doesn't turn anything that does exactly what you need, but lots of related code (see for example this). The way I would do follows the same pattern, getting a CGImageRef from your image, drawing it with a composition mode with your transparency, and getting back a UIImage from that using [UIImage imageWithCGImage:].