Swift on MacOS - How to save NSImage to disk

Question

I have the following code working:

let myImage = NSImage(named: "my-image.png")

filter.setValue(myImage, forKey: kCIInputImageKey)
filter.setValue(0.5, forKey: kCIInputIntensityKey)

let resultImage = filter.outputImage

How can I save the filtered image (as a PNG) to disk? Please note that this is a MacOS version where UIImage is not available (Xcode throws: No such module 'UIImage' when trying to import)

Answer 1

You can create a Core Image Context and createCGImage from your ciimage filter result. You can do it as follow:

import Cocoa

class ViewController: NSViewController {

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        let context = CIContext()
        let desktopURL = FileManager.default.urls(for: .desktopDirectory, in: .userDomainMask).first!
        guard
            let filter = CIFilter(name: "CISepiaTone"),
            let imageURL = Bundle.main.url(forResource: "my-image", withExtension: "png"),
            let ciImage = CIImage(contentsOf: imageURL)
        else { return }

        filter.setValue(ciImage, forKey: kCIInputImageKey)
        filter.setValue(0.5, forKey: kCIInputIntensityKey)

        guard let result = filter.outputImage, let cgImage = context.createCGImage(result, from: result.extent)
        else { return }

        let destinationURL = desktopURL.appendingPathComponent("my-image.png")
        let nsImage = NSImage(cgImage: cgImage, size: ciImage.extent.size)
        if nsImage.pngWrite(to: destinationURL, options: .withoutOverwriting) {
            print("File saved")
        }
    }
}

---

You will need those extensions to get the png representation data to write the resulting image to disk:

extension NSImage {
    var pngData: Data? {
        guard let tiffRepresentation = tiffRepresentation, let bitmapImage = NSBitmapImageRep(data: tiffRepresentation) else { return nil }
        return bitmapImage.representation(using: .png, properties: [:])
    }
    func pngWrite(to url: URL, options: Data.WritingOptions = .atomic) -> Bool {
        do {
            try pngData?.write(to: url, options: options)
            return true
        } catch {
            print(error)
            return false
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

One addition for @leo-dabus's answer to work out of the box in 2023. Use the Downloads folder instead of Desktop, and set File Access permissions to read/write in Target > Signing & Capabilities: