how to crop image in to pieces programmatically

Question

I need to divide an image into 9 pieces programmatically. Any suggestions on how to do this?

Answer 1

There are many ways to slice and dice an image but here is one. It uses Quartz to cut an image into 9 equal-sized fractions. Notice it does not handle rotated images (by that I mean images with imageOrientation!=0) but it should get you started:

+(NSArray *)splitImageInTo9:(UIImage *)im{
    CGSize size = [im size];
    NSMutableArray *arr = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithCapacity:9];
    for (int i=0;i<3;i++){
        for (int j=0;j<3;j++){
            CGRect portion = CGRectMake(i * size.width/3.0, j * size.height/3.0, size.width/3.0, size.height/3.0);
            UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(portion.size);
            CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
            CGContextScaleCTM(context, 1.0, -1.0);
            CGContextTranslateCTM(context, 0, -portion.size.height);
            CGContextTranslateCTM(context, -portion.origin.x, -portion.origin.y);
            CGContextDrawImage(context,CGRectMake(0.0, 0.0,size.width,  size.height), im.CGImage);
            [arr addObject:UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext()];
            UIGraphicsEndImageContext();


        }
    }
    return [arr autorelease];

}

The output will be an array of the 9 images each of size (with/3, height/3)