iOS 7 parallax effect in my view controller

I'm developing an app for iOS 7 in Objective-C. I've got a screen in my app with a few buttons and a pretty background image. (It's a simple xib with UIButtons on top of a UIImageView.)

I was thinking that it'd be cool if those buttons had the parallax effect that the iOS 7 home screen has, so if you tilt the phone you could see the background.

How can I implement that effect in my own app?

With iOS 7, Apple introduced UIMotionEffect to add Motion effects that are related to the orientation of the user’s device. For example, to emulate the parallax effect on the home screen, you can use the subclass UIInterpolatingMotionEffect, as explained here, just with a few lines of code.

Objective-C:

// Set vertical effect
UIInterpolatingMotionEffect *verticalMotionEffect = 
  [[UIInterpolatingMotionEffect alloc] 
  initWithKeyPath:@"center.y"
             type:UIInterpolatingMotionEffectTypeTiltAlongVerticalAxis];
verticalMotionEffect.minimumRelativeValue = @(-10);
verticalMotionEffect.maximumRelativeValue = @(10);

// Set horizontal effect 
UIInterpolatingMotionEffect *horizontalMotionEffect = 
  [[UIInterpolatingMotionEffect alloc] 
  initWithKeyPath:@"center.x"     
             type:UIInterpolatingMotionEffectTypeTiltAlongHorizontalAxis];
horizontalMotionEffect.minimumRelativeValue = @(-10);
horizontalMotionEffect.maximumRelativeValue = @(10);
  
// Create group to combine both
UIMotionEffectGroup *group = [UIMotionEffectGroup new];
group.motionEffects = @[horizontalMotionEffect, verticalMotionEffect];

// Add both effects to your view
[myBackgroundView addMotionEffect:group];

Swift (Thanks to @Lucas):

// Set vertical effect
let verticalMotionEffect = UIInterpolatingMotionEffect(keyPath: "center.y",
type: .TiltAlongVerticalAxis)
verticalMotionEffect.minimumRelativeValue = -10
verticalMotionEffect.maximumRelativeValue = 10

// Set horizontal effect
let horizontalMotionEffect = UIInterpolatingMotionEffect(keyPath: "center.x",
    type: .TiltAlongHorizontalAxis)
horizontalMotionEffect.minimumRelativeValue = -10
horizontalMotionEffect.maximumRelativeValue = 10

// Create group to combine both
let group = UIMotionEffectGroup()
group.motionEffects = [horizontalMotionEffect, verticalMotionEffect]

// Add both effects to your view
myBackgroundView.addMotionEffect(group)

Also, you can find a bunch of libraries to do this easier or to add this functionality to older iOS versions:

• NGAParallaxMotion (requires iOS 7).
• DVParallaxView (requires iOS 5.0 or higher and ARC).
• MKParallaxView (tested with iOS 6.0, requires ARC).
• UIView-MWParallax (tested with iOS 6.1, requires ARC).

Translated to swift in case anyone is lazy. Please vote @veducm answer up if you found this useful

@IBOutlet var background : UIImageView!

func parallaxEffectOnBackground() {
    let relativeMotionValue = 50
    var verticalMotionEffect : UIInterpolatingMotionEffect = UIInterpolatingMotionEffect(keyPath: "center.y",
        type: .TiltAlongVerticalAxis)
    verticalMotionEffect.minimumRelativeValue = -relativeMotionValue
    verticalMotionEffect.maximumRelativeValue = relativeMotionValue
    
    var horizontalMotionEffect : UIInterpolatingMotionEffect = UIInterpolatingMotionEffect(keyPath: "center.x",
        type: .TiltAlongHorizontalAxis)
    horizontalMotionEffect.minimumRelativeValue = -relativeMotionValue
    horizontalMotionEffect.maximumRelativeValue = relativeMotionValue

    var group : UIMotionEffectGroup = UIMotionEffectGroup()
    group.motionEffects = [horizontalMotionEffect, verticalMotionEffect]
    
    self.background.addMotionEffect(group)
}

@veducm's solution can be a little shorter. The UIMotionEffectGroup for its x and y motion is obsolete if you add the the x and y-axis motionEffects separately.

UIInterpolatingMotionEffect *motionEffect;
motionEffect = [[UIInterpolatingMotionEffect alloc] initWithKeyPath:@"center.x"
                                                               type:UIInterpolatingMotionEffectTypeTiltAlongHorizontalAxis];
motionEffect.minimumRelativeValue = @(-25);
motionEffect.maximumRelativeValue = @(25);
[bgView addMotionEffect:motionEffect];
    
motionEffect = [[UIInterpolatingMotionEffect alloc] initWithKeyPath:@"center.y"
                                                               type:UIInterpolatingMotionEffectTypeTiltAlongVerticalAxis];
motionEffect.minimumRelativeValue = @(-25);
motionEffect.maximumRelativeValue = @(25);
[bgView addMotionEffect:motionEffect];

const static CGFloat kCustomIOS7MotionEffectExtent = 10.0; 

- (void)applyMotionEffects:(UIView *YOUR_VIEW) {
     if (NSClassFromString(@"UIInterpolatingMotionEffect")) {
         UIInterpolatingMotionEffect *horizontalEffect = [[UIInterpolatingMotionEffect alloc] initWithKeyPath:@"center.x"
                                                                                                        type:UIInterpolatingMotionEffectTypeTiltAlongHorizontalAxis];
         horizontalEffect.minimumRelativeValue = @(-kCustomIOS7MotionEffectExtent);
         horizontalEffect.maximumRelativeValue = @( kCustomIOS7MotionEffectExtent);
         UIInterpolatingMotionEffect *verticalEffect = [[UIInterpolatingMotionEffect alloc] initWithKeyPath:@"center.y"
                                                                                                      type:UIInterpolatingMotionEffectTypeTiltAlongVerticalAxis];
         verticalEffect.minimumRelativeValue = @(-kCustomIOS7MotionEffectExtent);
         verticalEffect.maximumRelativeValue = @( kCustomIOS7MotionEffectExtent);
         UIMotionEffectGroup *motionEffectGroup = [[UIMotionEffectGroup alloc] init];
         motionEffectGroup.motionEffects = @[horizontalEffect, verticalEffect]; 
         [YOUR_VIEW addMotionEffect:motionEffectGroup];
     }
}

Here is an easy category to integrate the effect on iOs7+ :

NSString *const centerX = @"center.x";
NSString *const centerY = @"center.y";

//#define IS_OS_7_OR_LATER    ([[[UIDevice currentDevice] systemVersion] floatValue] >= 7.0)

@implementation UIView (TLMotionEffect)

- (void)addCenterMotionEffectsXYWithOffset:(CGFloat)offset {
    
//    if(!IS_OS_7_OR_LATER) return;
    if(floor(NSFoundationVersionNumber) <= NSFoundationVersionNumber_iOS_6_1) return;

    UIInterpolatingMotionEffect *xAxis;
    UIInterpolatingMotionEffect *yAxis;
    
    xAxis = [[UIInterpolatingMotionEffect alloc] initWithKeyPath:centerX type:UIInterpolatingMotionEffectTypeTiltAlongHorizontalAxis];
    xAxis.maximumRelativeValue = @(offset);
    xAxis.minimumRelativeValue = @(-offset);
    
    yAxis = [[UIInterpolatingMotionEffect alloc] initWithKeyPath:centerY type:UIInterpolatingMotionEffectTypeTiltAlongVerticalAxis];
    yAxis.minimumRelativeValue = @(-offset);
    yAxis.maximumRelativeValue = @(offset);
    
    UIMotionEffectGroup *group = [[UIMotionEffectGroup alloc] init];
    group.motionEffects = @[xAxis, yAxis];
    
    [self addMotionEffect:group];
}

@end

https://github.com/jvenegas/TLMotionEffect

UIMotionEffect provides a free parallax implementation on iOS 7.

http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/introduction-to-uimotioneffect/

https://github.com/michaeljbishop/NGAParallaxMotion lets you just set the parallax intensity.

This will help someone who is looking to implement parallax for tableView or collectionView.

> - first of all create the cell for the tableview and put the image view in it.

> - set the image height slightly more than the cell height. if cell height = 160 let the image height be 200 (to make the parallax effect and you can change it accordingly)

> - put this two variable in your viewController or any class where your tableView delegate is extended

let imageHeight:CGFloat = 150.0
let OffsetSpeed: CGFloat = 25.0

> - add the following code in the same class

 func scrollViewDidScroll(scrollView: UIScrollView) {
    //  print("inside scroll")
   
    if let visibleCells = seriesTabelView.visibleCells as? [SeriesTableViewCell] {
        for parallaxCell in visibleCells {
            var yOffset = ((seriesTabelView.contentOffset.y - parallaxCell.frame.origin.y) / imageHeight) * OffsetSpeedTwo
            parallaxCell.offset(CGPointMake(0.0, yOffset))
        }
    }
}

> - where seriesTabelView is my UItableview

> - and now lets goto the cell of this tableView and add the following code

func offset(offset: CGPoint) {
        posterImage.frame = CGRectOffset(self.posterImage.bounds, offset.x, offset.y)
    }

> - were posterImage is my UIImageView

If you want to implement this to collectionView just change the tableView vairable to your collectionView variable

and thats it. i am not sure if this is the best way. but it works for me. hope it works for you too. and let me know if there is any problem

Really dam easy to do so why refers complex code. just try it. Working

Take a view on imageview exactly size of image view. by default alpha for view set 0.

//MARK: Scroll View Delegate methods
-(void)scrollViewDidScroll:(UIScrollView *)scrollView{

NSLog(@"X: %f Y: %f",scrollView.contentOffset.x,scrollView.contentOffset.y);

CGFloat scrollY = _mainScrollView.contentOffset.y;
CGFloat height = _alphaView.frame.size.height;

CGFloat alphaMonitor = scrollY/height;

_alphaView.alpha = alphaMonitor;
}

Swift translation:

// Set vertical effect
let verticalMotionEffect = UIInterpolatingMotionEffect(keyPath: "center.y", type: .TiltAlongVerticalAxis)
verticalMotionEffect.minimumRelativeValue = -value
verticalMotionEffect.maximumRelativeValue = value

// Set vertical effect
let horizontalMotionEffect = UIInterpolatingMotionEffect(keyPath: "center.x", type: .TiltAlongHorizontalAxis)
verticalMotionEffect.minimumRelativeValue = -value
verticalMotionEffect.maximumRelativeValue = value

let group = UIMotionEffectGroup()
group.motionEffects = [horizontalMotionEffect, verticalMotionEffect]
self.motionEffect = group
self.addMotionEffect(group)