Drawing gradient over image in ios

Question

How to create gradient colour look like following image programatically.

Answer 1

I just wrote an UIImage extension for Swift 2.0. Maybe it's of some use. You call it with an array of UIColor (any number) and a frame where the gradient should be drawn.

extension UIImage {

    class func convertGradientToImage(colors: [UIColor], frame: CGRect) -> UIImage {

        // start with a CAGradientLayer
        let gradientLayer = CAGradientLayer()
        gradientLayer.frame = frame

        // add colors as CGCologRef to a new array and calculate the distances
        var colorsRef = [CGColor]()
        var locations = [NSNumber]()

        for i in 0 ... colors.count-1 {
            colorsRef.append(colors[i].CGColor as CGColorRef)
            locations.append(Float(i)/Float(colors.count-1))
        }

        gradientLayer.colors = colorsRef
        gradientLayer.locations = locations

        // now build a UIImage from the gradient
        UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(gradientLayer.bounds.size)
        gradientLayer.renderInContext(UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()!)
        let gradientImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext()
        UIGraphicsEndImageContext()

        // return the gradient image
        return gradientImage
    }
}

Call it like this:

let colors = [
    UIColor.blueColor(),
    UIColor.greenColor()
    // and many more if you wish
]
let gradientImage = UIImage.convertGradientToImage(colors, frame: navigationBar.bounds)

and apply with:

.backgroundColor = UIColor(patternImage: gradientImage)

or

.setBackgroundImage(gradientImage, forBarMetrics: .Default)

Answer 2

When you say "apply it over the image as a gradient", do you mean as a mask (revealing the image at the top, having it fade the image to transparent at the bottom)? If that's the case, you can apply that gradient as a mask, using CAGradientLayer:

CAGradientLayer *gradientMask = [CAGradientLayer layer];
gradientMask.frame = self.imageView.bounds;
gradientMask.colors = @[(id)[UIColor whiteColor].CGColor,
                        (id)[UIColor clearColor].CGColor];
self.imageView.layer.mask = gradientMask;

---

The above does a simple vertical gradient (because the default is vertical, linear gradient). But you asked about startPoint, endPoint, and locations. If for example, you wanted your mask applied horizontally, you would do:

gradientMask.startPoint = CGPointMake(0.0, 0.5);   // start at left middle
gradientMask.endPoint = CGPointMake(1.0, 0.5);     // end at right middle

If you wanted to have two gradients, one at the first 10% and another at the last 10%, you'd do:

gradientMask.colors = @[(id)[UIColor clearColor].CGColor,
                        (id)[UIColor whiteColor].CGColor,
                        (id)[UIColor whiteColor].CGColor,
                        (id)[UIColor clearColor].CGColor];
gradientMask.locations = @[@0.0, @0.10, @0.90, @1.0];

---

If you want a simple gradient by itself (not as a mask), you'd create a view and then add the gradient layer to it:

CAGradientLayer *gradient = [CAGradientLayer layer];
gradient.frame = view.bounds;
gradient.colors = @[(id)[UIColor whiteColor].CGColor,
                    (id)[UIColor blackColor].CGColor];
[view.layer addSublayer:gradient];

See the CAGradientLayer class reference.