How to get pixel data from a UIImage (Cocoa Touch) or CGImage (Core Graphics)?

I have a UIImage (Cocoa Touch). From that, I'm happy to get a CGImage or anything else you'd like that's available. I'd like to write this function:

- (int)getRGBAFromImage:(UIImage *)image atX:(int)xx andY:(int)yy {
  // [...]
  // What do I want to read about to help
  // me fill in this bit, here?
  // [...]

  int result = (red << 24) | (green << 16) | (blue << 8) | alpha;
  return result;
}

FYI, I combined Keremk's answer with my original outline, cleaned-up the typos, generalized it to return an array of colors and got the whole thing to compile. Here is the result:

+ (NSArray*)getRGBAsFromImage:(UIImage*)image atX:(int)x andY:(int)y count:(int)count
{
    NSMutableArray *result = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:count];

    // First get the image into your data buffer
    CGImageRef imageRef = [image CGImage];
    NSUInteger width = CGImageGetWidth(imageRef);
    NSUInteger height = CGImageGetHeight(imageRef);
    CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
    unsigned char *rawData = (unsigned char*) calloc(height * width * 4, sizeof(unsigned char));
    NSUInteger bytesPerPixel = 4;
    NSUInteger bytesPerRow = bytesPerPixel * width;
    NSUInteger bitsPerComponent = 8;
    CGContextRef context = CGBitmapContextCreate(rawData, width, height,
                    bitsPerComponent, bytesPerRow, colorSpace,
                    kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast | kCGBitmapByteOrder32Big);
    CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);

    CGContextDrawImage(context, CGRectMake(0, 0, width, height), imageRef);
    CGContextRelease(context);

    // Now your rawData contains the image data in the RGBA8888 pixel format.
    NSUInteger byteIndex = (bytesPerRow * y) + x * bytesPerPixel;
    for (int i = 0 ; i < count ; ++i)
    {
        CGFloat alpha = ((CGFloat) rawData[byteIndex + 3] ) / 255.0f;
        CGFloat red   = ((CGFloat) rawData[byteIndex]     ) / alpha;
        CGFloat green = ((CGFloat) rawData[byteIndex + 1] ) / alpha;
        CGFloat blue  = ((CGFloat) rawData[byteIndex + 2] ) / alpha;
        byteIndex += bytesPerPixel;

        UIColor *acolor = [UIColor colorWithRed:red green:green blue:blue alpha:alpha];
        [result addObject:acolor];
    }

  free(rawData);

  return result;
}

One way of doing it is to draw the image to a bitmap context that is backed by a given buffer for a given colorspace (in this case it is RGB): (note that this will copy the image data to that buffer, so you do want to cache it instead of doing this operation every time you need to get pixel values)

See below as a sample:

// First get the image into your data buffer
CGImageRef image = [myUIImage CGImage];
NSUInteger width = CGImageGetWidth(image);
NSUInteger height = CGImageGetHeight(image);
CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
unsigned char *rawData = malloc(height * width * 4);
NSUInteger bytesPerPixel = 4;
NSUInteger bytesPerRow = bytesPerPixel * width;
NSUInteger bitsPerComponent = 8;
CGContextRef context = CGBitmapContextCreate(rawData, width, height, bitsPerComponent, bytesPerRow, colorSpace, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast | kCGBitmapByteOrder32Big);
CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);

CGContextDrawImage(context, CGRectMake(0, 0, width, height));
CGContextRelease(context);

// Now your rawData contains the image data in the RGBA8888 pixel format.
int byteIndex = (bytesPerRow * yy) + xx * bytesPerPixel;
red = rawData[byteIndex];
green = rawData[byteIndex + 1];
blue = rawData[byteIndex + 2];
alpha = rawData[byteIndex + 3];

Apple's Technical Q&A QA1509 shows the following simple approach:

CFDataRef CopyImagePixels(CGImageRef inImage)
{
    return CGDataProviderCopyData(CGImageGetDataProvider(inImage));
}

Use CFDataGetBytePtr to get to the actual bytes (and various CGImageGet* methods to understand how to interpret them).

Couldn't believe that there is not one single correct answer here. No need to allocate pointers, and the unmultiplied values still need to be normalized. To cut to the chase, here is the correct version for Swift 4. For UIImage just use .cgImage.

extension CGImage {
    func colors(at: [CGPoint]) -> [UIColor]? {
        let colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB()
        let bytesPerPixel = 4
        let bytesPerRow = bytesPerPixel * width
        let bitsPerComponent = 8
        let bitmapInfo: UInt32 = CGImageAlphaInfo.premultipliedLast.rawValue | CGBitmapInfo.byteOrder32Big.rawValue
    
        guard let context = CGContext(data: nil, width: width, height: height, bitsPerComponent: bitsPerComponent, bytesPerRow: bytesPerRow, space: colorSpace, bitmapInfo: bitmapInfo),
            let ptr = context.data?.assumingMemoryBound(to: UInt8.self) else {
            return nil
        }
    
        context.draw(self, in: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: width, height: height))
    
        return at.map { p in
            let i = bytesPerRow * Int(p.y) + bytesPerPixel * Int(p.x)
            
            let a = CGFloat(ptr[i + 3]) / 255.0
            let r = (CGFloat(ptr[i]) / a) / 255.0
            let g = (CGFloat(ptr[i + 1]) / a) / 255.0
            let b = (CGFloat(ptr[i + 2]) / a) / 255.0
            
            return UIColor(red: r, green: g, blue: b, alpha: a)
        }
    }
}

The reason you have to draw/convert the image first into a buffer is because images can have several different formats. This step is required to convert it to a consistent format you can read.

NSString * path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"filename" ofType:@"jpg"];
UIImage * img = [[UIImage alloc]initWithContentsOfFile:path];
CGImageRef image = [img CGImage];
CFDataRef data = CGDataProviderCopyData(CGImageGetDataProvider(image));
const unsigned char * buffer =  CFDataGetBytePtr(data);

Here is a SO thread where @Matt renders only the desired pixel into a 1x1 context by displacing the image so that the desired pixel aligns with the one pixel in the context.

Swift 5 version

The answers given here are either outdated or incorrect because they don't take into account the following:

1. The pixel size of the image can differ from its point size that is returned by image.size.width/image.size.height.
2. There can be various layouts used by pixel components in the image, such as BGRA, ABGR, ARGB etc. or may not have an alpha component at all, such as BGR and RGB. For example, UIView.drawHierarchy(in:afterScreenUpdates:) method can produce BGRA images.
3. Color components can be premultiplied by the alpha for all pixels in the image and need to be divided by alpha in order to restore the original color.
4. For memory optimization used by CGImage, the size of a pixel row in bytes can be greater than the mere multiplication of the pixel width by 4.

The code below is to provide a universal Swift 5 solution to get the UIColor of a pixel for all such special cases. The code is optimized for usability and clarity, not for performance.

public extension UIImage {

    var pixelWidth: Int {
        return cgImage?.width ?? 0
    }

    var pixelHeight: Int {
        return cgImage?.height ?? 0
    }

    func pixelColor(x: Int, y: Int) -> UIColor {
        assert(
            0..<pixelWidth ~= x && 0..<pixelHeight ~= y,
            "Pixel coordinates are out of bounds")

        guard
            let cgImage = cgImage,
            let data = cgImage.dataProvider?.data,
            let dataPtr = CFDataGetBytePtr(data),
            let colorSpaceModel = cgImage.colorSpace?.model,
            let componentLayout = cgImage.bitmapInfo.componentLayout
        else {
            assertionFailure("Could not get a pixel of an image")
            return .clear
        }

        assert(
            colorSpaceModel == .rgb,
            "The only supported color space model is RGB")
        assert(
            cgImage.bitsPerPixel == 32 || cgImage.bitsPerPixel == 24,
            "A pixel is expected to be either 4 or 3 bytes in size")

        let bytesPerRow = cgImage.bytesPerRow
        let bytesPerPixel = cgImage.bitsPerPixel/8
        let pixelOffset = y*bytesPerRow + x*bytesPerPixel

        if componentLayout.count == 4 {
            let components = (
                dataPtr[pixelOffset + 0],
                dataPtr[pixelOffset + 1],
                dataPtr[pixelOffset + 2],
                dataPtr[pixelOffset + 3]
            )

            var alpha: UInt8 = 0
            var red: UInt8 = 0
            var green: UInt8 = 0
            var blue: UInt8 = 0

            switch componentLayout {
            case .bgra:
                alpha = components.3
                red = components.2
                green = components.1
                blue = components.0
            case .abgr:
                alpha = components.0
                red = components.3
                green = components.2
                blue = components.1
            case .argb:
                alpha = components.0
                red = components.1
                green = components.2
                blue = components.3
            case .rgba:
                alpha = components.3
                red = components.0
                green = components.1
                blue = components.2
            default:
                return .clear
            }

            // If chroma components are premultiplied by alpha and the alpha is `0`,
            // keep the chroma components to their current values.
            if cgImage.bitmapInfo.chromaIsPremultipliedByAlpha && alpha != 0 {
                let invUnitAlpha = 255/CGFloat(alpha)
                red = UInt8((CGFloat(red)*invUnitAlpha).rounded())
                green = UInt8((CGFloat(green)*invUnitAlpha).rounded())
                blue = UInt8((CGFloat(blue)*invUnitAlpha).rounded())
            }

            return .init(red: red, green: green, blue: blue, alpha: alpha)

        } else if componentLayout.count == 3 {
            let components = (
                dataPtr[pixelOffset + 0],
                dataPtr[pixelOffset + 1],
                dataPtr[pixelOffset + 2]
            )

            var red: UInt8 = 0
            var green: UInt8 = 0
            var blue: UInt8 = 0

            switch componentLayout {
            case .bgr:
                red = components.2
                green = components.1
                blue = components.0
            case .rgb:
                red = components.0
                green = components.1
                blue = components.2
            default:
                return .clear
            }

            return .init(red: red, green: green, blue: blue, alpha: UInt8(255))

        } else {
            assertionFailure("Unsupported number of pixel components")
            return .clear
        }
    }

}

public extension UIColor {

    convenience init(red: UInt8, green: UInt8, blue: UInt8, alpha: UInt8) {
        self.init(
            red: CGFloat(red)/255,
            green: CGFloat(green)/255,
            blue: CGFloat(blue)/255,
            alpha: CGFloat(alpha)/255)
    }

}

public extension CGBitmapInfo {

    enum ComponentLayout {

        case bgra
        case abgr
        case argb
        case rgba
        case bgr
        case rgb

        var count: Int {
            switch self {
            case .bgr, .rgb: return 3
            default: return 4
            }
        }

    }

    var componentLayout: ComponentLayout? {
        guard let alphaInfo = CGImageAlphaInfo(rawValue: rawValue & Self.alphaInfoMask.rawValue) else { return nil }
        let isLittleEndian = contains(.byteOrder32Little)

        if alphaInfo == .none {
            return isLittleEndian ? .bgr : .rgb
        }
        let alphaIsFirst = alphaInfo == .premultipliedFirst || alphaInfo == .first || alphaInfo == .noneSkipFirst

        if isLittleEndian {
            return alphaIsFirst ? .bgra : .abgr
        } else {
            return alphaIsFirst ? .argb : .rgba
        }
    }

    var chromaIsPremultipliedByAlpha: Bool {
        let alphaInfo = CGImageAlphaInfo(rawValue: rawValue & Self.alphaInfoMask.rawValue)
        return alphaInfo == .premultipliedFirst || alphaInfo == .premultipliedLast
    }

}

UIImage is a wrapper the bytes are CGImage or CIImage

According the the Apple Reference on UIImage the object is immutable and you have no access to the backing bytes. While it is true that you can access the CGImage data if you populated the UIImage with a CGImage (explicitly or implicitly), it will return NULL if the UIImage is backed by a CIImage and vice-versa.

> Image objects not provide direct access to their underlying image > data. However, you can retrieve the image data in other formats for > use in your app. Specifically, you can use the cgImage and ciImage > properties to retrieve versions of the image that are compatible with > Core Graphics and Core Image, respectively. You can also use the > UIImagePNGRepresentation(:) and UIImageJPEGRepresentation(:_:) > functions to generate an NSData object containing the image data in > either the PNG or JPEG format.

Common tricks to getting around this issue

As stated your options are

• UIImagePNGRepresentation or JPEG
• Determine if image has CGImage or CIImage backing data and get it there

Neither of these are particularly good tricks if you want output that isn't ARGB, PNG, or JPEG data and the data isn't already backed by CIImage.

My recommendation, try CIImage

While developing your project it might make more sense for you to avoid UIImage altogether and pick something else. UIImage, as a Obj-C image wrapper, is often backed by CGImage to the point where we take it for granted. CIImage tends to be a better wrapper format in that you can use a CIContext to get out the format you desire without needing to know how it was created. In your case, getting the bitmap would be a matter of calling

- render:toBitmap:rowBytes:bounds:format:colorSpace:

As an added bonus you can start doing nice manipulations to the image by chaining filters onto the image. This solves a lot of the issues where the image is upside down or needs to be rotated/scaled etc.

Building on Olie and Algal's answer, here is an updated answer for Swift 3

public func getRGBAs(fromImage image: UIImage, x: Int, y: Int, count: Int) -> [UIColor] {

var result = [UIColor]()

// First get the image into your data buffer
guard let cgImage = image.cgImage else {
    print("CGContext creation failed")
    return []
}

let width = cgImage.width
let height = cgImage.height
let colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB()
let rawdata = calloc(height*width*4, MemoryLayout<CUnsignedChar>.size)
let bytesPerPixel = 4
let bytesPerRow = bytesPerPixel * width
let bitsPerComponent = 8
let bitmapInfo: UInt32 = CGImageAlphaInfo.premultipliedLast.rawValue | CGBitmapInfo.byteOrder32Big.rawValue

guard let context = CGContext(data: rawdata, width: width, height: height, bitsPerComponent: bitsPerComponent, bytesPerRow: bytesPerRow, space: colorSpace, bitmapInfo: bitmapInfo) else {
    print("CGContext creation failed")
    return result
}

context.draw(cgImage, in: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: width, height: height))

// Now your rawData contains the image data in the RGBA8888 pixel format.
var byteIndex = bytesPerRow * y + bytesPerPixel * x

for _ in 0..<count {
    let alpha = CGFloat(rawdata!.load(fromByteOffset: byteIndex + 3, as: UInt8.self)) / 255.0
    let red = CGFloat(rawdata!.load(fromByteOffset: byteIndex, as: UInt8.self)) / alpha
    let green = CGFloat(rawdata!.load(fromByteOffset: byteIndex + 1, as: UInt8.self)) / alpha
    let blue = CGFloat(rawdata!.load(fromByteOffset: byteIndex + 2, as: UInt8.self)) / alpha
    byteIndex += bytesPerPixel
    
    let aColor = UIColor(red: red, green: green, blue: blue, alpha: alpha)
    result.append(aColor)
}

free(rawdata)

return result
}

[tag:swift]

To access the raw RGB values of an UIImage in Swift 5 use the underlying CGImage and its dataProvider:

import UIKit

let image = UIImage(named: "example.png")!

guard let cgImage = image.cgImage,
    let data = cgImage.dataProvider?.data,
    let bytes = CFDataGetBytePtr(data) else {
    fatalError("Couldn't access image data")
}
assert(cgImage.colorSpace?.model == .rgb)

let bytesPerPixel = cgImage.bitsPerPixel / cgImage.bitsPerComponent
for y in 0 ..< cgImage.height {
    for x in 0 ..< cgImage.width {
        let offset = (y * cgImage.bytesPerRow) + (x * bytesPerPixel)
        let components = (r: bytes[offset], g: bytes[offset + 1], b: bytes[offset + 2])
        print("[x:\(x), y:\(y)] \(components)")
    }
    print("---")
}

https://www.ralfebert.de/ios/examples/image-processing/uiimage-raw-pixels/

Based on different answers but mainly on this, this works for what I need:

UIImage *image1 = ...; // The image from where you want a pixel data
int pixelX = ...; // The X coordinate of the pixel you want to retrieve
int pixelY = ...; // The Y coordinate of the pixel you want to retrieve

uint32_t pixel1; // Where the pixel data is to be stored
CGContextRef context1 = CGBitmapContextCreate(&pixel1, 1, 1, 8, 4, CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB(), kCGImageAlphaNoneSkipFirst);
CGContextDrawImage(context1, CGRectMake(-pixelX, -pixelY, CGImageGetWidth(image1.CGImage), CGImageGetHeight(image1.CGImage)), image1.CGImage);
CGContextRelease(context1);

As a result of this lines, you will have a pixel in AARRGGBB format with alpha always set to FF in the 4 byte unsigned integer pixel1.