I m the beginner in iphone software development. I developing the application on skin cancer in which i want to calculate or count red color pixel from UIImage which is captured by iphone camera.It is possible to count red pixel from UIImage?
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See this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/448125/how-to-get-pixel-data-from-a-uiimage-cocoa-touch-or-cgimage-core-graphics – Can Berk Güder Feb 26 '10 at 16:39
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2define "red" `#FF0000` is pure red, but what about `#FF0001`? is that red? what about `#FF0100`? Or `#FE0000`? Or how about `#FF1C41`? That's still reddish... – Dave DeLong Nov 28 '10 at 23:15
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@ Dave DeLong, thanks for given you me suggestion but i find out the tremendous solution over it. – Tirth Nov 29 '10 at 04:39
1 Answers
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Since this is a question that is asked almost weekly, I decided to make a little example project that shows how to do this. You can look at the code at:
http://github.com/st3fan/iphone-experiments/tree/master/Miscellaneous/PixelAccess/
The important bit is the following code, which takes a UIImage
and then counts the number of pure red pixels. It is an example and you can use it and modify it for your own algorithms:
/**
* Structure to keep one pixel in RRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGBBBBBBBBAAAAAAAA format
*/
struct pixel {
unsigned char r, g, b, a;
};
/**
* Process the image and return the number of pure red pixels in it.
*/
- (NSUInteger) processImage: (UIImage*) image
{
NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels = 0;
// Allocate a buffer big enough to hold all the pixels
struct pixel* pixels = (struct pixel*) calloc(1, image.size.width * image.size.height * sizeof(struct pixel));
if (pixels != nil)
{
// Create a new bitmap
CGContextRef context = CGBitmapContextCreate(
(void*) pixels,
image.size.width,
image.size.height,
8,
image.size.width * 4,
CGImageGetColorSpace(image.CGImage),
kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast
);
if (context != NULL)
{
// Draw the image in the bitmap
CGContextDrawImage(context, CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, image.size.width, image.size.height), image.CGImage);
// Now that we have the image drawn in our own buffer, we can loop over the pixels to
// process it. This simple case simply counts all pixels that have a pure red component.
// There are probably more efficient and interesting ways to do this. But the important
// part is that the pixels buffer can be read directly.
NSUInteger numberOfPixels = image.size.width * image.size.height;
while (numberOfPixels > 0) {
if (pixels->r == 255) {
numberOfRedPixels++;
}
pixels++;
numberOfPixels--;
}
CGContextRelease(context);
}
free(pixels);
}
return numberOfRedPixels;
}
A simple example on how to call this:
- (IBAction) processImage
{
NSUInteger numberOfRedPixels = [self processImage: [UIImage imageNamed: @"DutchFlag.png"]];
label_.text = [NSString stringWithFormat: @"There are %d red pixels in the image", numberOfRedPixels];
}
The example project on Github contains a complete working example.

Stefan Arentz
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Hi St3fan,The above code giving me only constant red pixels(8000) value even if i changed the photo. I changing many images but it giving me same count value. – Tirth Feb 27 '10 at 07:13
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hi St3fan, from above code i changing the image DutchFlag.png instead of that my own .png image but i getting error(Iphone simulator goes to debugger). – Tirth Mar 02 '10 at 08:43
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Hi St3fan, I going to make application in which i want to make process camera captured .jpg skin image. Can it work fine with skin image pixels intensities? – Tirth Mar 03 '10 at 12:15
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Rajendra, the code is just an example on how to access the pixels. You will have to write the correct filters and algorithms for your specific project. – Stefan Arentz Mar 03 '10 at 13:44
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St3fan, which steps should i have to be follow for RGB color counting from camera captured image from iphone? – Tirth Mar 04 '10 at 06:30
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I don't see how this ever worked. The value of `pixels` is being incremented so it cannot be used in the `free(pixels);`. The original pointer returned by `calloc` needs to be used in the `free()`. My solution is to duplicate the original pointer and increment that copy in the loop. Was life different a decade ago? :-) I'm using Xcode 13.2.1 and iOS 15. – Jeff Mar 05 '22 at 21:47