How to compress of reduce the size of an image before uploading to Parse as PFFile? (Swift)

Question

I was trying to upload an image file to Parse after taking photo directly on phone. But it throws an exception:

Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: 'PFFile cannot be larger than 10485760 bytes'

Here is my code:

In first view controller:

override func prepareForSegue(segue: UIStoryboardSegue, sender: AnyObject?) {
    if (segue.identifier == "getImage")
    {
        var svc = segue.destinationViewController as! ClothesDetail
        svc.imagePassed = imageView.image
    }
}

In view controller that uploads image:

let imageData = UIImagePNGRepresentation(imagePassed)
let imageFile = PFFile(name: "\(picName).png", data: imageData)

var userpic = PFObject(className:"UserPic")
userpic["picImage"] = imageFile`

But I still need to upload that photo to Parse. Is there any way to reduce the size or resolution of the image?

Answer 1

Yes you can use UIImageJPEGRepresentation instead of UIImagePNGRepresentation to reduce your image file size. You can just create an extension UIImage as follow:

Xcode 8.2 • Swift 3.0.2

extension UIImage {
    enum JPEGQuality: CGFloat {
        case lowest  = 0
        case low     = 0.25
        case medium  = 0.5
        case high    = 0.75
        case highest = 1
    }

    /// Returns the data for the specified image in JPEG format.
    /// If the image object’s underlying image data has been purged, calling this function forces that data to be reloaded into memory.
    /// - returns: A data object containing the JPEG data, or nil if there was a problem generating the data. This function may return nil if the image has no data or if the underlying CGImageRef contains data in an unsupported bitmap format.
    func jpeg(_ quality: JPEGQuality) -> Data? {
        return UIImageJPEGRepresentation(self, quality.rawValue)
    }
}

---

edit/update:

Xcode 10 Swift 4.2

extension UIImage {
    enum JPEGQuality: CGFloat {
        case lowest  = 0
        case low     = 0.25
        case medium  = 0.5
        case high    = 0.75
        case highest = 1
    }

    /// Returns the data for the specified image in JPEG format.
    /// If the image object’s underlying image data has been purged, calling this function forces that data to be reloaded into memory.
    /// - returns: A data object containing the JPEG data, or nil if there was a problem generating the data. This function may return nil if the image has no data or if the underlying CGImageRef contains data in an unsupported bitmap format.
    func jpeg(_ jpegQuality: JPEGQuality) -> Data? {
        return jpegData(compressionQuality: jpegQuality.rawValue)
    }
}

---

Usage:

if let imageData = image.jpeg(.lowest) {
    print(imageData.count)
}

Answer 2

If you want to limit size of image to some concrete value u can do as follow:

import UIKit

extension UIImage {
    // MARK: - UIImage+Resize
    func compressTo(_ expectedSizeInMb:Int) -> UIImage? {
        let sizeInBytes = expectedSizeInMb * 1024 * 1024
        var needCompress:Bool = true
        var imgData:Data?
        var compressingValue:CGFloat = 1.0
        while (needCompress && compressingValue > 0.0) {
        if let data:Data = UIImageJPEGRepresentation(self, compressingValue) {
            if data.count < sizeInBytes {
                needCompress = false
                imgData = data
            } else {
                compressingValue -= 0.1
            }
        }
    }

    if let data = imgData {
        if (data.count < sizeInBytes) {
            return UIImage(data: data)
        }
    }
        return nil
    } 
}

Answer 3

Using func jpegData(compressionQuality: CGFloat) -> Data? works well if you don't need to compress to a specific size. However, for certain images, I find it useful to be able to compress below a certain file size. In that case, jpegData is unreliable, and iterative compressing of an image results in plateauing out on filesize (and can be really expensive). Instead, I prefer to reduce the size of the UIImage itself, then convert to jpegData and check to see if the reduced size is beneath the value I chose (within a margin of error that I set). I adjust the compression step multiplier based on the ratio of the current filesize to the desired filesize to speed up the first iterations which are the most expensive.

Swift 5

extension UIImage {
    func resized(withPercentage percentage: CGFloat, isOpaque: Bool = true) -> UIImage? {
        let canvas = CGSize(width: size.width * percentage, height: size.height * percentage)
        let format = imageRendererFormat
        format.opaque = isOpaque
        return UIGraphicsImageRenderer(size: canvas, format: format).image {
            _ in draw(in: CGRect(origin: .zero, size: canvas))
        }
    }

    func compress(to kb: Int, allowedMargin: CGFloat = 0.2) -> Data {
        let bytes = kb * 1024
        var compression: CGFloat = 1.0
        let step: CGFloat = 0.05
        var holderImage = self
        var complete = false
        while(!complete) {
            if let data = holderImage.jpegData(compressionQuality: 1.0) {
                let ratio = data.count / bytes
                if data.count < Int(CGFloat(bytes) * (1 + allowedMargin)) {
                    complete = true
                    return data
                } else {
                    let multiplier:CGFloat = CGFloat((ratio / 5) + 1)
                    compression -= (step * multiplier)
                }
            }
            
            guard let newImage = holderImage.resized(withPercentage: compression) else { break }
            holderImage = newImage
        }
        return Data()
    }
}

And usage:

let data = image.compress(to: 300)

UIImage resized extension comes from: How do I resize the UIImage to reduce upload image size