Does iOS 5 support blur CoreImage fiters?

Question

According to the documentation it should support blurring, note the "Available in iOS 5.0 and later":

CIFilter Class Reference

But according to the device, it doesn't:

[CIFilter filterNamesInCategory:kCICategoryBlur];

returns nothing.

According to the following only these filters are available on my iPhone and Simulator (which are both running 5.0):

[CIFilter filterNamesInCategory:kCICategoryBuiltIn]

CIAdditionCompositing,
CIAffineTransform,
CICheckerboardGenerator,
CIColorBlendMode,
CIColorBurnBlendMode,
CIColorControls,
CIColorCube,
CIColorDodgeBlendMode,
CIColorInvert,
CIColorMatrix,
CIColorMonochrome,
CIConstantColorGenerator,
CICrop,
CIDarkenBlendMode,
CIDifferenceBlendMode,
CIExclusionBlendMode,
CIExposureAdjust,
CIFalseColor,
CIGammaAdjust,
CIGaussianGradient,
CIHardLightBlendMode,
CIHighlightShadowAdjust,
CIHueAdjust,
CIHueBlendMode,
CILightenBlendMode,
CILinearGradient,
CILuminosityBlendMode,
CIMaximumCompositing,
CIMinimumCompositing,
CIMultiplyBlendMode,
CIMultiplyCompositing,
CIOverlayBlendMode,
CIRadialGradient,
CISaturationBlendMode,
CIScreenBlendMode,
CISepiaTone,
CISoftLightBlendMode,
CISourceAtopCompositing,
CISourceInCompositing,
CISourceOutCompositing,
CISourceOverCompositing,
CIStraightenFilter,
CIStripesGenerator,
CITemperatureAndTint,
CIToneCurve,
CIVibrance,
CIVignette,
CIWhitePointAdjust

Answer 1

While Core Image on iOS 5.0 lacks blur filters, there is still a way to get GPU-accelerated blurs of images and video. My open source GPUImage framework has multiple blur types, including Gaussian (using the GPUImageGaussianBlurFilter for a general Gaussian or the GPUImageFastBlurFilter for a hardware-optimized 9-hit Gaussian), box (using a GPUImageBoxBlurFilter), median (using a GPUImageMedianFilter), and a bilateral blur (using a GPUImageBilateralBlurFilter).

I describe the shaders used to pull off the hardware-optimized Gaussian blur in this answer, and you can examine the code I use for the rest within the framework. These filters run tens of times faster than any CPU-bound routine I've tried yet.

I've also incorporated these blurs into multi-stage processing effects, like unsharp masking, tilt-shift filtering, Canny edge detection, and Harris corner detection, all of which are available as filters within this framework.