How to capture UIView to UIImage without loss of quality on retina display

Daniel picture Daniel · Dec 2, 2010 · Viewed 156.1k times · Source

My code works fine for normal devices but creates blurry images on retina devices.

Does anybody know a solution for my issue?

+ (UIImage *) imageWithView:(UIView *)view
{
    UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(view.bounds.size);
    [view.layer renderInContext:UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()];

    UIImage * img = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();

    UIGraphicsEndImageContext();

    return img;
}

Answer

Tommy picture Tommy · Dec 2, 2010

Switch from use of UIGraphicsBeginImageContext to UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions (as documented on this page). Pass 0.0 for scale (the third argument) and you'll get a context with a scale factor equal to that of the screen.

UIGraphicsBeginImageContext uses a fixed scale factor of 1.0, so you're actually getting exactly the same image on an iPhone 4 as on the other iPhones. I'll bet either the iPhone 4 is applying a filter when you implicitly scale it up or just your brain is picking up on it being less sharp than everything around it.

So, I guess:

#import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h>

+ (UIImage *)imageWithView:(UIView *)view
{
    UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(view.bounds.size, view.opaque, 0.0);
    [view.layer renderInContext:UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()];

    UIImage * img = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();

    UIGraphicsEndImageContext();

    return img;
}

And in Swift 4:

func image(with view: UIView) -> UIImage? {
    UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(view.bounds.size, view.isOpaque, 0.0)
    defer { UIGraphicsEndImageContext() }
    if let context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext() {
        view.layer.render(in: context)
        let image = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext()
        return image
    }
    return nil
}