How to mask a square image into an image with round corners in iOS?

Question

How can you mask a square image into an image with round corners?

Answer 1

Both the methods work but the differences shows up depending on where you use it.

For Ex: If you have a table view with the cells showing an image along with other labels, etc., and you use layer to set the cornerRadius, the scrolling will take a big hit. It gets jerky.

I faced this issue when I was using Layer for an image in a table view cell and was trying to figure out the cause of that jerkiness only to find that CALayer was the culprit.

Used the first solution of doing the stuff in drawRect explained by NilObject. That works like a charm with scrolling being smooth as silk.

On the other hand, if you want to use this in static views like popover view, etc., layer is the easiest way to do it.

As I said, both the methods work well just that you need to decide based on where you want to use it.

Answer 2

I use this method.

+ (UIImage *)imageWithColor:(UIColor *)color andSize:(CGSize)size;
    {
      UIImage *img = nil;


        CGRect rect = CGRectMake(0, 0, size.width, size.height);
        UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(rect.size);
        CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
        CGContextSetFillColorWithColor(context,
                                     color.CGColor);
        CGContextFillRect(context, rect);
        img = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();

        UIGraphicsEndImageContext();


      return img;
    }

Answer 3

See this Post - Very simple answer

How to set round corners in UI images in iphone

UIImageView * roundedView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage: [UIImage imageNamed:@"wood.jpg"]];
// Get the Layer of any view
CALayer * l = [roundedView layer];
[l setMasksToBounds:YES];
[l setCornerRadius:10.0];

Answer 4

Building off of algal, here are a couple methods that are nice to put in an UIImage category:

- (UIImage *) roundedCornerImageWithRadius:(CGFloat)radius
{
    CGRect imageRect = CGRectMake(0, 0, self.size.width, self.size.height);
    UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(imageRect.size,NO,0.0); //scale 0 yields better results

    //create a bezier path defining rounded corners and use it for clippping
    UIBezierPath * path = [UIBezierPath bezierPathWithRoundedRect:imageRect cornerRadius:radius];
    [path addClip];

    // draw the image into the implicit context
    [self drawInRect:imageRect];

    // get image and cleanup
    UIImage *roundedCornerImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
    UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
    return roundedCornerImage;
}

+ (UIImage *)imageWithColor:(UIColor *)color size:(CGSize)size andCornerRadius:(CGFloat)radius
{
    UIImage *image = nil;
    if (size.width == 0 || size.height == 0) {
        size = CGSizeMake(1.0, 1.0);
    }
    CGRect rect = CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, size.width, size.height);
    UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(rect.size,NO,0.0); //yields sharper results than UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(rect.size)
    CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
    if (context)
    {
        CGContextSetFillColorWithColor(context, [color CGColor]);
        if (radius > 0.0) {
            //create a bezier path defining rounded corners and use it for clippping
            UIBezierPath * path = [UIBezierPath bezierPathWithRoundedRect:rect cornerRadius:radius];
            [path addClip];
            CGContextAddPath(context, path.CGPath);
        }
        CGContextFillRect(context, rect);
        image = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
        UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
    }
    return image;
}

Answer 5

Here is an even easier method that is available in iPhone 3.0 and up. Every View-based object has an associated layer. Each layer can have a corner radius set, this will give you just what you want:

UIImageView * roundedView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage: [UIImage imageNamed:@"wood.jpg"]];
// Get the Layer of any view
CALayer * layer = [roundedView layer];
[layer setMasksToBounds:YES];
[layer setCornerRadius:10.0];

// You can even add a border
[layer setBorderWidth:4.0];
[layer setBorderColor:[[UIColor blueColor] CGColor]];

To use these methods you might need to add:

#import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h>

Answer 6

I realize this is old news but just to boil it down a bit:

There are two possible questions here: (1) how do I apply rounded corners to a UIView (such as a UIImageView), which will be displayed on screen, and (2) how do I mask a square image (that is, a UIImage) to produce a new image with rounded corners.

For (1), the easiest course is to use CoreAnimation and set the view.layer.cornerRadius property

 // Because we're using CoreAnimation, we must include QuartzCore.h
 // and link QuartzCore.framework in a build phases 
 #import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h> 

 // start with an image 
 UIImage * fooImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"foo.png"];
 // put it in a UIImageView
 UIView * view = [UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:fooImage];
 // round its corners. This mask now applies to the view's layer's *background*
 view.layer.cornerRadius = 10.f
 // enable masksToBounds, so the mask applies to its foreground, the image
 view.layer.masksToBounds = YES;

For (2), the best way is to use the UIKit graphics operations:

// start with an image 
UIImage * fooImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"foo.png"];
CGRect imageRect = CGRectMake(0, 0, fooImage.size.width, fooImage.size.height);
// set the implicit graphics context ("canvas") to a bitmap context for images
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(imageRect.size,NO,0.0);
// create a bezier path defining rounded corners
UIBezierPath * path = [UIBezierPath bezierPathWithRoundedRect:imageRect cornerRadius:10.f];
// use this path for clipping in the implicit context
[path addClip];
// draw the image into the implicit context
[fooImage drawInRect:imageRect];
// save the clipped image from the implicit context into an image 
UIImage *maskedImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
// cleanup
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();

What's tricky about problem (2) is that you might think you could do the whole operation using the view.layer.mask property in CoreAnimation. But you can't because the CALayer renderInContext: method, which you'd use to generate a UIImage from the masked layer, seems to ignore the mask. Worse, the documentation for renderInContext: doesn't mention this, and only alludes to the behavior for OSX 10.5.

Some further context: the above approach to (2) is using UIKit's wrappers around more basic CoreGraphics functionality. You can do the same thing using the CoreGraphics calls directly – that is what the chosen answer is doing -- but then you need build the rounded rect bezier path manually from curves and lines and you also need to compensate for the fact that CoreGraphics uses a drawing coordinate system which is flipped with respect to UIKit's.