How can I add stickers to an image in Swift?

Question

I'm working on a Swift iOS app where I want the user to be able to place an image (a sticker such as a beard or an eyepatch) over another image.

Currently I have it working to where they can take a photo or pull an image up from their Photos and have that display in a UIImage. Obviously next is adding the sticker. I've been able to dig up zero data on this from Google or Stack. And I mean zero.

Does anyone have a general idea of how I would execute this? Specifics would help too of course.

Answer 1

Here's the easy way.

1. have a UIView as a parent, let's say stickerView
2. add image to stickerView
3. add stickers to stickerView
4. save a snapshot of stickerView

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Here's the code to snapshot UIView,

extension UIImage {
    class func imageWithView(view: UIView) -> UIImage {
        UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(view.bounds.size, view.opaque, 0.0)
        view.drawViewHierarchyInRect(view.bounds, afterScreenUpdates: true)
        let img = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext()
        UIGraphicsEndImageContext()
        return img
    }
}

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Usage

let snapshotImage = UIImage.imageWithView(stickerView)