accessing UIImage properties without loading in memory the image

Question

As you know the iphone guidelines discourage loading uiimages that are greater than 1024x1024.

The size of the images that i would have to load varies, and i would l

Answer 1

As of iOS 4.0, the iOS SDK includes the CGImageSource... functions (in the ImageIO framework). It's a very flexible API to query metadata without loading the image into memory. Getting the pixel dimensions of an image should work like this (make sure to include the ImageIO.framework in your target):

#import 

NSURL *imageFileURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:...];
CGImageSourceRef imageSource = CGImageSourceCreateWithURL((CFURLRef)imageFileURL, NULL);
if (imageSource == NULL) {
    // Error loading image
    ...
    return;
}

CGFloat width = 0.0f, height = 0.0f;
CFDictionaryRef imageProperties = CGImageSourceCopyPropertiesAtIndex(imageSource, 0, NULL);

CFRelease(imageSource);

if (imageProperties != NULL) {

    CFNumberRef widthNum  = CFDictionaryGetValue(imageProperties, kCGImagePropertyPixelWidth);
    if (widthNum != NULL) {
        CFNumberGetValue(widthNum, kCFNumberCGFloatType, &width);
    }

    CFNumberRef heightNum = CFDictionaryGetValue(imageProperties, kCGImagePropertyPixelHeight);
    if (heightNum != NULL) {
        CFNumberGetValue(heightNum, kCFNumberCGFloatType, &height);
    }

    // Check orientation and flip size if required
    CFNumberRef orientationNum = CFDictionaryGetValue(imageProperties, kCGImagePropertyOrientation);
    if (orientationNum != NULL) {
        int orientation;
        CFNumberGetValue(orientationNum, kCFNumberIntType, &orientation);
        if (orientation > 4) {
            CGFloat temp = width;
            width = height;
            height = temp;
        }
    }

    CFRelease(imageProperties);
}

NSLog(@"Image dimensions: %.0f x %.0f px", width, height);

(adapted from "Programming with Quartz" by Gelphman and Laden, listing 9.5, page 228)