Question

I’m currently making an app where the user takes a photo or select it from an album, then an overlay is placed over the image. The user can then scale, rotate and save the image.

For now, I have 2 xib files. The first one has thumbnails for overlay pictures to choose from. Clicking on one of them goes to another xib file where I have 2 UIImageViews. One for the overlay and one for the camera. Previously I just used interface builder to set an image at the attributes. But if have 20 overlays, it means I have to use 20 xibs. So I thought the best way is to add pictures through code so I can use this 2nd xib as a template for the overlays. Here’s when I’m stuck. When I click on a thumbnail in the 1st xib file, how do tell the 2nd xib file to store an overlay in the UIImageView?

For the camera, I’m using

imageView.image = [info objectForKey:@"UIImagePickerControllerOriginalImage"];

and it works fine. I can even save it to the album. I thought I could use the code below for the overlays but that didn’t work.

UIImage *image = [UIImage imageNamed: @"char1.png"];

Hope someone can help. Thanks very much.

Hakimo

Answer 1

You don’t need to use xib at all in this situation. Create UIImageView by hands, set its frame and image, add it as a subview to your viewControllers.view . You can have as many UIImageViews as you need. Make an array of them. Your case is obviously misuse of xibs concept. Xibs are usually used when there is need to create some complicated view with many subviews that wouldn’t be used in code, like labels, decoration images etc.

CGRect frameForImage = CGRectMake(100, 100, 200, 300);
UIImageView *originalImage = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithFrame:frameForImage];
originalImage.image = [info objectForKey:@"UIImagePickerControllerOriginalImage"];
[self.view addSubview:originalImage];
[originalImage release];

frameForImage.origin.x += 400;
UIImageView *resizedImage = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithFrame:frameForImage];
resizedImage.image = [info objectForKey:@"UIImagePickerControllerWhateverImage"];
[self.view addSubview:resizedImage];
[resizedImage release];