Question

Im not sure how else I should approach it, but if I was to (in my mac application) have a grid of NSViews, which the user can change the colour of each, is it possible to then translate this, so now I have been given a colour for each pixel by the user, make this into an exportable image?

I honestly can’t think of how else to do this. I don’t want to go ahead an realise I have taken a rather foolish path.

The idea is I will have a grid of squares which the user can paint, a colour in each square, a square representing a pixel in the final image. So they paint with like a paint bucket filling each one, then export it into an actual image file.

Any help much appreciated, thanks.

Answer 1

A grid of NSViews sounds really heavy for what you’re doing. Why not write one single custom view that checks the mouse position and modifies the data appropriately? Then you’d write a custom drawing method to fill the custom view, and you could use the same exact draw method to write to an NSImage which you could export.

You’ll need to do a bit o’ math. For each “pixel”, call -set on the appropriate NSColor, then use NSBezierPath‘s -fillRect method. It may help you to get out a pencil & paper to figure out the math for the rect origins & sizes.

Check http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/CocoaDrawingGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html for help if you’ve never done custom drawing before. It’s really not that bad, just takes a little reading. 🙂