resizing a UIImage without loading it entirely into memory?

According to this session, iOS Memory Deep Dive, we had better use ImageIO to downscale images.

The bad of using UIImage downscale images.

• Will decompress original image into memory
• Internal coordinate space transforms are expensive

Use ImageIO

• ImageIO can read image sizes and metadata information without dirtying memory.

• ImageIO can resize images at cost of resized image only.

About Image in memory

• Memory use is related to the dimensions of the images, not the file size.
• UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions always uses SRGB rendering-format, which use 4 bytes per pixel.
• A image have load -> decode -> render 3 phases.
• UIImage is expensive for sizing and to resizing

For the following image, if you use UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions we only need 590KB to load a image, while we need 2048 pixels x 1536 pixels x 4 bytes per pixel = 10MB when decoding

while UIGraphicsImageRenderer, introduced in iOS 10, will automatically pick the best graphic format in iOS12. It means, you may save 75% of memory by replacing UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions with UIGraphicsImageRenderer if you don't need SRGB.

This is my article about iOS images in memory

func resize(url: NSURL, maxPixelSize: Int) -> CGImage? {
    let imgSource = CGImageSourceCreateWithURL(url, nil)
    guard let imageSource = imgSource else {
        return nil
    }

    var scaledImage: CGImage?
    let options: [NSString: Any] = [
            // The maximum width and height in pixels of a thumbnail.
            kCGImageSourceThumbnailMaxPixelSize: maxPixelSize,
            kCGImageSourceCreateThumbnailFromImageAlways: true,
            // Should include kCGImageSourceCreateThumbnailWithTransform: true in the options dictionary. Otherwise, the image result will appear rotated when an image is taken from camera in the portrait orientation.
            kCGImageSourceCreateThumbnailWithTransform: true
    ]
    scaledImage = CGImageSourceCreateThumbnailAtIndex(imageSource, 0, options as CFDictionary)

    return scaledImage
}


let filePath = Bundle.main.path(forResource:"large_leaves_70mp", ofType: "jpg")

let url = NSURL(fileURLWithPath: filePath ?? "")

let image = resize(url: url, maxPixelSize: 600)

or

// Downsampling large images for display at smaller size
func downsample(imageAt imageURL: URL, to pointSize: CGSize, scale: CGFloat) -> UIImage {
    let imageSourceOptions = [kCGImageSourceShouldCache: false] as CFDictionary
    let imageSource = CGImageSourceCreateWithURL(imageURL as CFURL, imageSourceOptions)!
    let maxDimensionInPixels = max(pointSize.width, pointSize.height) * scale
    let downsampleOptions =
        [kCGImageSourceCreateThumbnailFromImageAlways: true,
        kCGImageSourceShouldCacheImmediately: true,
        // Should include kCGImageSourceCreateThumbnailWithTransform: true in the options dictionary. Otherwise, the image result will appear rotated when an image is taken from camera in the portrait orientation.
        kCGImageSourceCreateThumbnailWithTransform: true,
        kCGImageSourceThumbnailMaxPixelSize: maxDimensionInPixels] as CFDictionary
    let downsampledImage =
        CGImageSourceCreateThumbnailAtIndex(imageSource, 0, downsampleOptions)!
    return UIImage(cgImage: downsampledImage)
}

You should take a look at CGImageSource in ImageIO.framework, but it is only available since iOS 4.0.

Quick example :

-(UIImage*)resizeImageToMaxSize:(CGFloat)max path:(NSString*)path
{
    CGImageSourceRef imageSource = CGImageSourceCreateWithURL((CFURLRef)[NSURL fileURLWithPath:path], NULL);
    if (!imageSource)
        return nil;

    CFDictionaryRef options = (CFDictionaryRef)[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
        (id)kCFBooleanTrue, (id)kCGImageSourceCreateThumbnailWithTransform,
        (id)kCFBooleanTrue, (id)kCGImageSourceCreateThumbnailFromImageIfAbsent,
        (id)@(max),
        (id)kCGImageSourceThumbnailMaxPixelSize,
        nil];
    CGImageRef imgRef = CGImageSourceCreateThumbnailAtIndex(imageSource, 0, options);

    UIImage* scaled = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:imgRef];

    CGImageRelease(imgRef);
    CFRelease(imageSource);

    return scaled;
}