CGImage create thumbnail image with desired size

If you want a thumbnail with size 1024 (maximum dimension), you should be passing 1024, not 2048. Also, if you want to make sure the thumbnail is created to your specifications, you should be asking for kCGImageSourceCreateThumbnailFromImageAlways, not kCGImageSourceCreateThumbnailFromImageIfAbsent, since the latter might cause an existing thumbnail to be used, and it could be smaller than you want.

So, here's code that does what you ask:

NSURL* url = // whatever;
NSDictionary* d = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
                   (id)kCFBooleanTrue, kCGImageSourceShouldAllowFloat,
                   (id)kCFBooleanTrue, kCGImageSourceCreateThumbnailWithTransform,
                   (id)kCFBooleanTrue, kCGImageSourceCreateThumbnailFromImageAlways,
                   [NSNumber numberWithInt:1024], kCGImageSourceThumbnailMaxPixelSize,
                   nil];
CGImageSourceRef src = CGImageSourceCreateWithURL((CFURLRef)url, NULL);
CGImageRef imref = CGImageSourceCreateThumbnailAtIndex(src, 0, (CFDictionaryRef)d);
// memory management omitted

Swift 3 version of the answer:

func loadImage(at url: URL, maxDimension max: Int) -> UIImage? {
    
    guard let imageSource = CGImageSourceCreateWithURL(url as CFURL, nil)
        else {
            return nil
    }

    let options: [CFString: Any] = [
        kCGImageSourceShouldAllowFloat: true,
        kCGImageSourceCreateThumbnailWithTransform: true,
        kCGImageSourceCreateThumbnailFromImageAlways: true,
        kCGImageSourceThumbnailMaxPixelSize: max
    ]
    
    guard let thumbnail = CGImageSourceCreateThumbnailAtIndex(imageSource, 0, options as CFDictionary)
        else {
            return nil
    }
    
    return UIImage(cgImage: thumbnail)
}