Tinting a grayscale NSImage (or CIImage)

Question

I have a grayscale image which I want to use for drawing Cocoa controls. The image has various levels of gray. Where it is darkest, I want it to draw a specified tint color dark

Answer 1

The CIMultiplyCompositing filter is definitely the way to do this. If it's crashing, can you post a stack trace? I use CIFilters heavily and don't have crashing issues.

//assume inputImage is the greyscale CIImage you want to tint

CIImage* outputImage = nil;

//create some green
CIFilter* greenGenerator = [CIFilter filterWithName:@"CIConstantColorGenerator"];
CIColor* green = [CIColor colorWithRed:0.30 green:0.596 blue:0.172];
[greenGenerator setValue:green forKey:@"inputColor"];
CIImage* greenImage = [greenGenerator valueForKey:@"outputImage"];

//apply a multiply filter
CIFilter* filter = [CIFilter filterWithName:@"CIMultiplyCompositing"];
[filter setValue:greenImage forKey:@"inputImage"];
[filter setValue:inputImage forKey:@"inputBackgroundImage"];
outputImage = [filter valueForKey:@"outputImage"];

[outputImage drawAtPoint:NSZeroPoint fromRect:NSRectFromCGRect([outputImage extent]) operation:NSCompositeCopy fraction:1.0];