The simplest way to resize an UIImage?

Question

In my iPhone app, I take a picture with the camera, then I want to resize it to 290*390 pixels. I was using this method to resize the image :

UIImage *newI         


        

Answer 1

I've discovered that it's difficult to find an answer that you can use out-of-the box in your Swift 3 project. The main problem of other answers that they don't honor the alpha-channel of the image. Here is the technique that I'm using in my projects.

extension UIImage {

    func scaledToFit(toSize newSize: CGSize) -> UIImage {
        if (size.width < newSize.width && size.height < newSize.height) {
            return copy() as! UIImage
        }

        let widthScale = newSize.width / size.width
        let heightScale = newSize.height / size.height

        let scaleFactor = widthScale < heightScale ? widthScale : heightScale
        let scaledSize = CGSize(width: size.width * scaleFactor, height: size.height * scaleFactor)

        return self.scaled(toSize: scaledSize, in: CGRect(x: 0.0, y: 0.0, width: scaledSize.width, height: scaledSize.height))
    }

    func scaled(toSize newSize: CGSize, in rect: CGRect) -> UIImage {
        if UIScreen.main.scale == 2.0 {
            UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(newSize, !hasAlphaChannel, 2.0)
        }
        else {
            UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(newSize)
        }

        draw(in: rect)
        let newImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext()
        UIGraphicsEndImageContext()

        return newImage ?? UIImage()
    }

    var hasAlphaChannel: Bool {
        guard let alpha = cgImage?.alphaInfo else {
            return false
        }
        return alpha == CGImageAlphaInfo.first ||
            alpha == CGImageAlphaInfo.last ||
            alpha == CGImageAlphaInfo.premultipliedFirst ||
            alpha == CGImageAlphaInfo.premultipliedLast
    }
}

Example of usage:

override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()

    let size = CGSize(width: 14.0, height: 14.0)
    if let image = UIImage(named: "barbell")?.scaledToFit(toSize: size) {
        let imageView = UIImageView(image: image)
        imageView.center = CGPoint(x: 100, y: 100)
        view.addSubview(imageView)
    }
}

This code is a rewrite of Apple's extension with added support for images with and without alpha channel.

As a further reading I recommend checking this article for different image resizing techniques. Current approach offers decent performance, it operates high-level APIs and easy to understand. I recommend sticking to it unless you find that image resizing is a bottleneck in your performance.