This question seems to have been put to rest, but in my quest for a solution that I could more easily understand (and written in Swift), I arrived at this (also posted to: How to crop the UIImage?)
I wanted to be able to crop from a region based on an aspect ratio, and scale to a size based on a outer bounding extent. Here is my variation:
import AVFoundation
import ImageIO
class Image {
class func crop(image:UIImage, crop source:CGRect, aspect:CGSize, outputExtent:CGSize) -> UIImage {
let sourceRect = AVMakeRectWithAspectRatioInsideRect(aspect, source)
let targetRect = AVMakeRectWithAspectRatioInsideRect(aspect, CGRect(origin: CGPointZero, size: outputExtent))
let opaque = true, deviceScale:CGFloat = 0.0
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(targetRect.size, opaque, deviceScale)
let scale = max(
targetRect.size.width / sourceRect.size.width,
targetRect.size.height / sourceRect.size.height)
let drawRect = CGRect(origin: -sourceRect.origin * scale, size: image.size * scale)
image.drawInRect(drawRect)
let scaledImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext()
UIGraphicsEndImageContext()
return scaledImage
}
}
There are a couple things that I found confusing, the separate concerns of cropping and resizing. Cropping is handled with the origin of the rect that you pass to drawInRect, and scaling is handled by the size portion. In my case, I needed to relate the size of the cropping rect on the source, to my output rect of the same aspect ratio. The scale factor is then output / input, and this needs to be applied to the drawRect (passed to drawInRect).
One caveat is that this approach effectively assumes that the image you are drawing is larger than the image context. I have not tested this, but I think you can use this code to handle cropping / zooming, but explicitly defining the scale parameter to be the aforementioned scale parameter. By default, UIKit applies a multiplier based on the screen resolution.
Finally, it should be noted that this UIKit approach is higher level than CoreGraphics / Quartz and Core Image approaches, and seems to handle image orientation issues. It is also worth mentioning that it is pretty fast, second to ImageIO, according to this post here: http://nshipster.com/image-resizing/