I have a UIImage (Cocoa Touch). From that, I'm happy to get a CGImage or anything else you'd like that's available. I'd like to write this function:
- (int)getRGBAFromImage:(UIImage *)image atX:(int)xx andY:(int)yy {
// [...]
// What do I want to read about to help
// me fill in this bit, here?
// [...]
int result = (red << 24) | (green << 16) | (blue << 8) | alpha;
return result;
}
FYI, I combined Keremk's answer with my original outline, cleaned-up the typos, generalized it to return an array of colors and got the whole thing to compile. Here is the result:
+ (NSArray*)getRGBAsFromImage:(UIImage*)image atX:(int)x andY:(int)y count:(int)count
{
NSMutableArray *result = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:count];
// First get the image into your data buffer
CGImageRef imageRef = [image CGImage];
NSUInteger width = CGImageGetWidth(imageRef);
NSUInteger height = CGImageGetHeight(imageRef);
CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
unsigned char *rawData = (unsigned char*) calloc(height * width * 4, sizeof(unsigned char));
NSUInteger bytesPerPixel = 4;
NSUInteger bytesPerRow = bytesPerPixel * width;
NSUInteger bitsPerComponent = 8;
CGContextRef context = CGBitmapContextCreate(rawData, width, height,
bitsPerComponent, bytesPerRow, colorSpace,
kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast | kCGBitmapByteOrder32Big);
CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);
CGContextDrawImage(context, CGRectMake(0, 0, width, height), imageRef);
CGContextRelease(context);
// Now your rawData contains the image data in the RGBA8888 pixel format.
NSUInteger byteIndex = (bytesPerRow * y) + x * bytesPerPixel;
for (int i = 0 ; i < count ; ++i)
{
CGFloat alpha = ((CGFloat) rawData[byteIndex + 3] ) / 255.0f;
CGFloat red = ((CGFloat) rawData[byteIndex] ) / alpha;
CGFloat green = ((CGFloat) rawData[byteIndex + 1] ) / alpha;
CGFloat blue = ((CGFloat) rawData[byteIndex + 2] ) / alpha;
byteIndex += bytesPerPixel;
UIColor *acolor = [UIColor colorWithRed:red green:green blue:blue alpha:alpha];
[result addObject:acolor];
}
free(rawData);
return result;
}
One way of doing it is to draw the image to a bitmap context that is backed by a given buffer for a given colorspace (in this case it is RGB): (note that this will copy the image data to that buffer, so you do want to cache it instead of doing this operation every time you need to get pixel values)
See below as a sample:
// First get the image into your data buffer
CGImageRef image = [myUIImage CGImage];
NSUInteger width = CGImageGetWidth(image);
NSUInteger height = CGImageGetHeight(image);
CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
unsigned char *rawData = malloc(height * width * 4);
NSUInteger bytesPerPixel = 4;
NSUInteger bytesPerRow = bytesPerPixel * width;
NSUInteger bitsPerComponent = 8;
CGContextRef context = CGBitmapContextCreate(rawData, width, height, bitsPerComponent, bytesPerRow, colorSpace, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast | kCGBitmapByteOrder32Big);
CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);
CGContextDrawImage(context, CGRectMake(0, 0, width, height));
CGContextRelease(context);
// Now your rawData contains the image data in the RGBA8888 pixel format.
int byteIndex = (bytesPerRow * yy) + xx * bytesPerPixel;
red = rawData[byteIndex];
green = rawData[byteIndex + 1];
blue = rawData[byteIndex + 2];
alpha = rawData[byteIndex + 3];
Apple's Technical Q&A QA1509 shows the following simple approach:
CFDataRef CopyImagePixels(CGImageRef inImage)
{
return CGDataProviderCopyData(CGImageGetDataProvider(inImage));
}
Use CFDataGetBytePtr to get to the actual bytes (and various CGImageGet* methods to understand how to interpret them).
Couldn't believe that there is not one single correct answer here. No need to allocate pointers, and the unmultiplied values still need to be normalized. To cut to the chase, here is the correct version for Swift 4. For UIImage just use .cgImage.
extension CGImage {
func colors(at: [CGPoint]) -> [UIColor]? {
let colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB()
let bytesPerPixel = 4
let bytesPerRow = bytesPerPixel * width
let bitsPerComponent = 8
let bitmapInfo: UInt32 = CGImageAlphaInfo.premultipliedLast.rawValue | CGBitmapInfo.byteOrder32Big.rawValue
guard let context = CGContext(data: nil, width: width, height: height, bitsPerComponent: bitsPerComponent, bytesPerRow: bytesPerRow, space: colorSpace, bitmapInfo: bitmapInfo),
let ptr = context.data?.assumingMemoryBound(to: UInt8.self) else {
return nil
}
context.draw(self, in: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: width, height: height))
return at.map { p in
let i = bytesPerRow * Int(p.y) + bytesPerPixel * Int(p.x)
let a = CGFloat(ptr[i + 3]) / 255.0
let r = (CGFloat(ptr[i]) / a) / 255.0
let g = (CGFloat(ptr[i + 1]) / a) / 255.0
let b = (CGFloat(ptr[i + 2]) / a) / 255.0
return UIColor(red: r, green: g, blue: b, alpha: a)
}
}
}
The reason you have to draw/convert the image first into a buffer is because images can have several different formats. This step is required to convert it to a consistent format you can read.
NSString * path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"filename" ofType:@"jpg"];
UIImage * img = [[UIImage alloc]initWithContentsOfFile:path];
CGImageRef image = [img CGImage];
CFDataRef data = CGDataProviderCopyData(CGImageGetDataProvider(image));
const unsigned char * buffer = CFDataGetBytePtr(data);
Swift 5 version
The answers given here are either outdated or incorrect because they don't take into account the following:
image.size.width/image.size.height.UIView.drawHierarchy(in:afterScreenUpdates:) method can produce BGRA images.CGImage, the size of a pixel row in bytes can be greater than the mere multiplication of the pixel width by 4.The code below is to provide a universal Swift 5 solution to get the UIColor of a pixel for all such special cases. The code is optimized for usability and clarity, not for performance.
public extension UIImage {
var pixelWidth: Int {
return cgImage?.width ?? 0
}
var pixelHeight: Int {
return cgImage?.height ?? 0
}
func pixelColor(x: Int, y: Int) -> UIColor {
assert(
0..<pixelWidth ~= x && 0..<pixelHeight ~= y,
"Pixel coordinates are out of bounds")
guard
let cgImage = cgImage,
let data = cgImage.dataProvider?.data,
let dataPtr = CFDataGetBytePtr(data),
let colorSpaceModel = cgImage.colorSpace?.model,
let componentLayout = cgImage.bitmapInfo.componentLayout
else {
assertionFailure("Could not get a pixel of an image")
return .clear
}
assert(
colorSpaceModel == .rgb,
"The only supported color space model is RGB")
assert(
cgImage.bitsPerPixel == 32 || cgImage.bitsPerPixel == 24,
"A pixel is expected to be either 4 or 3 bytes in size")
let bytesPerRow = cgImage.bytesPerRow
let bytesPerPixel = cgImage.bitsPerPixel/8
let pixelOffset = y*bytesPerRow + x*bytesPerPixel
if componentLayout.count == 4 {
let components = (
dataPtr[pixelOffset + 0],
dataPtr[pixelOffset + 1],
dataPtr[pixelOffset + 2],
dataPtr[pixelOffset + 3]
)
var alpha: UInt8 = 0
var red: UInt8 = 0
var green: UInt8 = 0
var blue: UInt8 = 0
switch componentLayout {
case .bgra:
alpha = components.3
red = components.2
green = components.1
blue = components.0
case .abgr:
alpha = components.0
red = components.3
green = components.2
blue = components.1
case .argb:
alpha = components.0
red = components.1
green = components.2
blue = components.3
case .rgba:
alpha = components.3
red = components.0
green = components.1
blue = components.2
default:
return .clear
}
// If chroma components are premultiplied by alpha and the alpha is `0`,
// keep the chroma components to their current values.
if cgImage.bitmapInfo.chromaIsPremultipliedByAlpha && alpha != 0 {
let invUnitAlpha = 255/CGFloat(alpha)
red = UInt8((CGFloat(red)*invUnitAlpha).rounded())
green = UInt8((CGFloat(green)*invUnitAlpha).rounded())
blue = UInt8((CGFloat(blue)*invUnitAlpha).rounded())
}
return .init(red: red, green: green, blue: blue, alpha: alpha)
} else if componentLayout.count == 3 {
let components = (
dataPtr[pixelOffset + 0],
dataPtr[pixelOffset + 1],
dataPtr[pixelOffset + 2]
)
var red: UInt8 = 0
var green: UInt8 = 0
var blue: UInt8 = 0
switch componentLayout {
case .bgr:
red = components.2
green = components.1
blue = components.0
case .rgb:
red = components.0
green = components.1
blue = components.2
default:
return .clear
}
return .init(red: red, green: green, blue: blue, alpha: UInt8(255))
} else {
assertionFailure("Unsupported number of pixel components")
return .clear
}
}
}
public extension UIColor {
convenience init(red: UInt8, green: UInt8, blue: UInt8, alpha: UInt8) {
self.init(
red: CGFloat(red)/255,
green: CGFloat(green)/255,
blue: CGFloat(blue)/255,
alpha: CGFloat(alpha)/255)
}
}
public extension CGBitmapInfo {
enum ComponentLayout {
case bgra
case abgr
case argb
case rgba
case bgr
case rgb
var count: Int {
switch self {
case .bgr, .rgb: return 3
default: return 4
}
}
}
var componentLayout: ComponentLayout? {
guard let alphaInfo = CGImageAlphaInfo(rawValue: rawValue & Self.alphaInfoMask.rawValue) else { return nil }
let isLittleEndian = contains(.byteOrder32Little)
if alphaInfo == .none {
return isLittleEndian ? .bgr : .rgb
}
let alphaIsFirst = alphaInfo == .premultipliedFirst || alphaInfo == .first || alphaInfo == .noneSkipFirst
if isLittleEndian {
return alphaIsFirst ? .bgra : .abgr
} else {
return alphaIsFirst ? .argb : .rgba
}
}
var chromaIsPremultipliedByAlpha: Bool {
let alphaInfo = CGImageAlphaInfo(rawValue: rawValue & Self.alphaInfoMask.rawValue)
return alphaInfo == .premultipliedFirst || alphaInfo == .premultipliedLast
}
}
To access the raw RGB values of an UIImage in Swift 5 use the underlying CGImage and its dataProvider:
import UIKit
let image = UIImage(named: "example.png")!
guard let cgImage = image.cgImage,
let data = cgImage.dataProvider?.data,
let bytes = CFDataGetBytePtr(data) else {
fatalError("Couldn't access image data")
}
assert(cgImage.colorSpace?.model == .rgb)
let bytesPerPixel = cgImage.bitsPerPixel / cgImage.bitsPerComponent
for y in 0 ..< cgImage.height {
for x in 0 ..< cgImage.width {
let offset = (y * cgImage.bytesPerRow) + (x * bytesPerPixel)
let components = (r: bytes[offset], g: bytes[offset + 1], b: bytes[offset + 2])
print("[x:\(x), y:\(y)] \(components)")
}
print("---")
}
https://www.ralfebert.de/ios/examples/image-processing/uiimage-raw-pixels/