iOS: Cropping a still image grabbed from a UIImagePickerController camera with overlay

Question

I am new to iOS and I have been bashing head against the wall for this for the past week looking around online for tutorials such as: Dealing with Exif Images, Resizing images, and many more random questions here on StackOverflow. From these, I figured that >=iOS 4.0, all images taken from the camera contain EXIF-based rotation information.

What's not working: After trying different image cropping techniques, all I end up with is cropping of the image at some random corners and also, the resulting image appears to be zoomed in :( When I use a png image from the internet (which don't contain EXIF data), the cropping is working. By random corners, I mean - the image ends up being cropped at the top-right/top-left and zoomed-in.

What I am trying to accomplish:
I am trying to crop an image 100 px from top and 100 px from bottom. Essentially, I am using two overlay strips - 1 at the top, and 1 at the bottom with the CGRect(0.0, 0.0, SCREEN_WIDTH, 100.0) [a 100.0 px tall strip at the top] and another CGRect(0.0, SCREEN_HEIGHT - 100, SCREEN_WIDTH, 100.0) [another 100 px tall strip at the bottom]. I need to get the image between these two strips: I assume the height of the image is: SCREEN_HEIGHT - 200.0.

Displaying UIImagePickerController for camera with overlay:

    //SCREEN_HEIGHT = 480 and SCREEN_WIDTH = 320
    UIImagePickerController *imagePicker = [[UIImagePickerController alloc] init];

    if([UIImagePickerController isSourceTypeAvailable:UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera] == NO) 
    {
        NSLog(@"Camera not available");
        return;
    }

    imagePicker.sourceType = UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera;
    imagePicker.delegate = self;
    imagePicker.allowsEditing = NO;


    // Hide the controls
    imagePicker.showsCameraControls = NO;
    imagePicker.navigationBarHidden = YES;

    // Make camera view full screen
    imagePicker.wantsFullScreenLayout = YES;
    //imagePicker.cameraViewTransform = CGAffineTransformScale(imagePicker.cameraViewTransform, CAMERA_TRANSFORM_X, CAMERA_TRANSFORM_Y);


    //Overlay
    //OverlayView is a plain UIView with the CGRects mentioned in the question.
    OverlayView *overlay = [[OverlayView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT)]; 
    [overlay initOverlay:self];
    imagePicker.cameraOverlayView = overlay;
    [self presentModalViewController:imagePicker animated:YES];

Code to rotate image based on EXIF imageOrientation property and cropping it

- (UIImage *) cropImage: (UIImage *) originalImage 
{

    CGRect cropRect = CGRectMake(0, 100.0, SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT - 100);

    CGRect transformedRect = [self TransformCGRectForUIImageOrientation:cropRect :originalImage.imageOrientation :originalImage.size];

    CGImageRef resultImageRef = CGImageCreateWithImageInRect(originalImage.CGImage, transformedRect);

    UIImage *newImage = [[[UIImage alloc] initWithCGImage:resultImageRef scale:1.0 orientation:originalImage.imageOrientation] autorelease];

    return newImage;
}

- (CGRect) TransformCGRectForUIImageOrientation: (CGRect) source: (UIImageOrientation) orientation: (CGSize) imageSize {

    switch (orientation) {
        case UIImageOrientationLeft: { // EXIF #8
            CGAffineTransform txTranslate = CGAffineTransformMakeTranslation(
                                                                             imageSize.height, 0.0);
            CGAffineTransform txCompound = CGAffineTransformRotate(txTranslate,
                                                                   M_PI_2);
            return CGRectApplyAffineTransform(source, txCompound);
        }
        case UIImageOrientationDown: { // EXIF #3
            CGAffineTransform txTranslate = CGAffineTransformMakeTranslation(
                                                                             imageSize.width, imageSize.height);
            CGAffineTransform txCompound = CGAffineTransformRotate(txTranslate,
                                                                   M_PI);
            return CGRectApplyAffineTransform(source, txCompound);
        }
        case UIImageOrientationRight: { // EXIF #6
            CGAffineTransform txTranslate = CGAffineTransformMakeTranslation(
                                                                             0.0, imageSize.width);
            CGAffineTransform txCompound = CGAffineTransformRotate(txTranslate,
                                                                   M_PI + M_PI_2);
            return CGRectApplyAffineTransform(source, txCompound);
        }
        case UIImageOrientationUp: // EXIF #1 - do nothing
        default: // EXIF 2,4,5,7 - ignore
            return source;
    }

The cropImage method seems to work for images downloaded from the internet (which don't contain any orientation info). I am running out of options. Could someone PLEASE help me out?

Thanks for reading!

Answer 1

When you can, it is easier to skip drawing images with Core Graphics:

- (UIImage *)cropImage:(UIImage *)oldImage {
    CGSize imageSize = oldImage.size
    UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions( CGSizeMake( imageSize.width,
                                                        imageSize.height - 200),
                                            NO,
                                            0.);
    [oldImage drawAtPoint:CGPointMake( 0, -100)
                blendMode:kCGBlendModeCopy
                    alpha:1.];
    UIImage *croppedImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
    UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
    return croppedImage;
}