How to crop an image from AVCapture to a rect seen on the display

In Swift 4:

I prefer to never force-unwrap to avoid crashes, so I use optionals and guards in mine.

private func cropToPreviewLayer(originalImage: UIImage) -> UIImage? {
    guard let cgImage = originalImage.cgImage else { return nil }

    let outputRect = previewLayer.metadataOutputRectConverted(fromLayerRect: previewLayer.bounds)

    let width = CGFloat(cgImage.width)
    let height = CGFloat(cgImage.height)
    let cropRect = CGRect(x: outputRect.origin.x * width, y: outputRect.origin.y * height, width: outputRect.size.width * width, height: outputRect.size.height * height)

    if let croppedCGImage = cgImage.cropping(to: cropRect) {
        return UIImage(cgImage: croppedCGImage, scale: 1.0, orientation: originalImage.imageOrientation)
    }

    return nil
}

I've solved this problem by using metadataOutputRectOfInterestForRect function.

It works with any orientation.

[_stillImageOutput captureStillImageAsynchronouslyFromConnection:stillImageConnection
                                               completionHandler:^(CMSampleBufferRef imageDataSampleBuffer, NSError *error)
 {
     if (error)
     {
         [_delegate cameraView:self error:@"Take picture failed"];
     }
     else
     {

         NSData *jpegData = [AVCaptureStillImageOutput jpegStillImageNSDataRepresentation:imageDataSampleBuffer];
         UIImage *takenImage = [UIImage imageWithData:jpegData];

         CGRect outputRect = [_previewLayer metadataOutputRectOfInterestForRect:_previewLayer.bounds];
         CGImageRef takenCGImage = takenImage.CGImage;
         size_t width = CGImageGetWidth(takenCGImage);
         size_t height = CGImageGetHeight(takenCGImage);
         CGRect cropRect = CGRectMake(outputRect.origin.x * width, outputRect.origin.y * height, outputRect.size.width * width, outputRect.size.height * height);

         CGImageRef cropCGImage = CGImageCreateWithImageInRect(takenCGImage, cropRect);
         takenImage = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:cropCGImage scale:1 orientation:takenImage.imageOrientation];
         CGImageRelease(cropCGImage);

     }
 }
 ];

The takenImage is still imageOrientation dependent image. You can delete orientation information for further image processing.

UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(takenImage.size);
[takenImage drawAtPoint:CGPointZero];
takenImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();

In Swift 3:

private func cropToPreviewLayer(originalImage: UIImage) -> UIImage {
    let outputRect = previewLayer.metadataOutputRectConverted(fromLayerRect: previewLayer.bounds)
    var cgImage = originalImage.cgImage!
    let width = CGFloat(cgImage.width)
    let height = CGFloat(cgImage.height)
    let cropRect = CGRect(x: outputRect.origin.x * width, y: outputRect.origin.y * height, width: outputRect.size.width * width, height: outputRect.size.height * height)
    
    cgImage = cgImage.cropping(to: cropRect)!
    let croppedUIImage = UIImage(cgImage: cgImage, scale: 1.0, orientation: originalImage.imageOrientation)
    
    return croppedUIImage
}