The Little UIImage Class That Could (draw vector art)

As an iOS developer, have you ever thought any of the following:

• I wish there was a way use vector icons (instead of bitmap ones)!
• I'm tired of making two PNG icons for every image, to support retina images!
• I don't want to make @4x icons when the new Eagle Eye Retina Display comes out!
• I have all these icons created in [Illustrator, Inkscape, ...] and I'm annoyed that I have to re-render them as PNG files every time I make a change!
• Why is it raining right now?

If you have, then BRPDFImage is here to help you, and wash away those rainy day blues. BRPDFImage is a very small extension of UIImage that allows you to use PDF artwork anywhere a UIImage is needed. The PDF format can be thought of as just another vector art file format, and in fact any vector art editing program worth a lick will support saving PDF files.

BRPDFImage supports iOS 5+. Yep, our old friend the iPad 1 is still supported. Keep on goin' on, little iPad 1.

Here is an example of how simple it is to use BRPDFImage:

NSURL *url = [[NSBundle mainBundle] URLForResource:@"sunshine" withExtension:@"pdf"];
UIColor *tintColor = [UIApplication sharedApplication].keyWindow.tintColor;
UIImage *img = [[BRPDFImage alloc] initWithURL:url maximumSize:CGSizeMake(32,32) tintColor:tintColor];

This creates a UIImage from sunshine.pdf in the application's main bundle. The image will be treated as a mask and opaque pixels will be tinted the main window's tint color. You can pass a nil tint color to not give it the tinted treatment.

BRPDFImage simply renders the PDF resource into a bitmap image when you initialize it, which is why you must pass in a desired CGSize (or maximum size) when doing so. From that point on, you basically have a normal UIImage and can treat it as such.

PDF rendering on iOS is pretty fast, but if you're using a lot of BRPDFImage's in a UITableView or UICollectionView you might want to cache the instances for better performance. The Demo App included in the project does just that (see below).

Just copy BRPDFImage.h and BRPDFImage.m into your project. These are located in the BRPDFImage/BRPDFImage directory. You will need to add the CoreGraphics.framework to your build target, if it's not already included. Easy!

The repository also inclues a small iPhone/iPad app that runs on iOS 5.1.1 or later. It will render a UITableView (iOS < 6) or a UICollectionView (iOS >= 6) full of some randomly tinted PDF icons. The icons come courtesy of Font Awesome (thanks, Dave, you're awesome).