How to read the average color of a UIImage using CIAreaAverage

Swift version: 5.0

Paul Hudson @twostraws May 28th 2019

Core Image has a filter that resample an image down to 1x1 pixels so you can read the average color, although it’s a weirdly hard to use.

To simplify things, here’s an extension on UIImage that returns an optional UIColor – it will be nil only if something went wrong while reading your image, but otherwise it will contain the average color for the entire image:

extension UIImage {
    var averageColor: UIColor? {
        guard let inputImage = CIImage(image: self) else { return nil }
        let extentVector = CIVector(x: inputImage.extent.origin.x, y: inputImage.extent.origin.y, z: inputImage.extent.size.width, w: inputImage.extent.size.height)

        guard let filter = CIFilter(name: "CIAreaAverage", parameters: [kCIInputImageKey: inputImage, kCIInputExtentKey: extentVector]) else { return nil }
        guard let outputImage = filter.outputImage else { return nil }

        var bitmap = [UInt8](repeating: 0, count: 4)
        let context = CIContext(options: [.workingColorSpace: kCFNull])
        context.render(outputImage, toBitmap: &bitmap, rowBytes: 4, bounds: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 1, height: 1), format: .RGBA8, colorSpace: nil)

        return UIColor(red: CGFloat(bitmap[0]) / 255, green: CGFloat(bitmap[1]) / 255, blue: CGFloat(bitmap[2]) / 255, alpha: CGFloat(bitmap[3]) / 255)
    }
}

Available from iOS 9.0

Did this solution work for you? Please pass it on!

Other people are reading…

About the Swift Knowledge Base

This is part of the Swift Knowledge Base, a free, searchable collection of solutions for common iOS questions.