Tinting a grayscale NSImage (or CIImage)

Question

I have a grayscale image which I want to use for drawing Cocoa controls. The image has various levels of gray. Where it is darkest, I want it to draw a specified tint color dark

Answer 1

I wanted to tint an image with a tint color that had alpha without seeing the original colors of the image show through. Here's how you can do that:

extension NSImage {
    func tinting(with tintColor: NSColor) -> NSImage {
        guard let cgImage = self.cgImage(forProposedRect: nil, context: nil, hints: nil) else { return self }

        return NSImage(size: size, flipped: false) { bounds in
            guard let context = NSGraphicsContext.current?.cgContext else { return false }

            tintColor.set()
            context.clip(to: bounds, mask: cgImage)
            context.fill(bounds)

            return true
        }
    }
}