setColorFilter doesn't work on Android < 2.2

Question

i have a problem with the setColorFilter-Method on a drawable.

It works fine on Android 2.2 but not on a version lower than that.

My problem is similar to what is described here Drawable.setColorFilter() not working on Android 2.1, but that doesn't work for me...

I use this code which works fine on Android 2.2 but not on anything lower than that.

ImageView imageView = (ImageView) findViewById( R.id.imageView1 );        
Bitmap immutableBitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeResource( getResources(), R.drawable.mybitmap );
Bitmap mutableBitmap = immutableBitmap.copy( Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888, true );
immutableBitmap.recycle();
immutableBitmap = null;
Drawable d1 = new BitmapDrawable( mutableBitmap );
d1.setColorFilter( 0xff00ffff, PorterDuff.Mode.MULTIPLY );
imageView.setImageDrawable( d1 );

Any clues to get it working are much appreciated :)

Answer 1

I don't know if there's another way around this, but i found that using imageView.setBackgroundDrawable() instead of imageView.setImageDrawable() resolves this issue on < 2.2.

Answer 2

Following on @Joe's comments and my findings for Android 2.1 from above, I think a better workaround is to apply the same colorFilter to both the Drawable as well as ImageView (unfortunatelly Drawable.getColorFilter() is only available from API 21 onwards):

d1.setColorFilter         ( 0xff00ffff, PorterDuff.Mode.MULTIPLY );
imageView.setColorFilter  ( 0xff00ffff, PorterDuff.Mode.MULTIPLY );
imageView.setImageDrawable( d1 );

One thing against for ImageView.setBackgroundDrawable() is that it won't respect ScaleType.

Probably an even better solution if you have extended ImageView already for other purposes is to fix it in the setImageDrawable() specifically for Android 2.1, where it would take the colorFilter through reflection from mBitmapState.mPaint.getColorFilter() and apply it to ImageView.

Or alternatively use ImageViewCompat class below - it requires Apache Commons Lang, you can download the JAR (and sources) from http://search.maven.org or if you use Maven or Gradle: org.apache.commons / commons-lang3. Last version to work best with Android 2.1 / Java 5 I found to be commons-lang3 v3.1

ImageViewCompat.setImageDrawable(imageView, d1);

package org.yourapp.widget;

import org.apache.commons.lang3.reflect.FieldUtils;

import android.graphics.Paint;
import android.graphics.drawable.BitmapDrawable;
import android.graphics.drawable.Drawable;
import android.os.Build;
import android.util.Log;
import android.widget.ImageView;

public final class ImageViewCompat {
    /**
     * Members
     */
    private static final String TAG = ImageViewCompat.class.getSimpleName();

    /**
     * ImageView.setImageDrawable() backward compatible version.
     * 
     * @param p_imageView
     * @param p_drawable
     */
    public static final void setImageDrawable(ImageView p_imageView, Drawable p_drawable) {
        /*
         * API 2.1 workaround - apply Drawable color filter to ImageView. 
         * @see http://stackoverflow.com/a/28108208/308836
         */
        if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT <= 7) {
            if (p_drawable instanceof BitmapDrawable) {
                try {
                    Object mBitmapState =         FieldUtils.readDeclaredField(p_drawable,   "mBitmapState", true);
                    Paint mPaint        = (Paint) FieldUtils.readDeclaredField(mBitmapState, "mPaint",       true);
                    p_imageView.setColorFilter(mPaint.getColorFilter());
                }
                catch (Exception e) {
                    Log.e(TAG, Log.getStackTraceString(e));
                }
            }
        }

        /*
         * Set image drawable.
         */
        p_imageView.setImageDrawable(p_drawable);
    }
}