Colorizing a constantly changing image - how to release this properly?

Question

Hello- I have done some searching on google and various forums but can't find a good answer for this. Hoping someone here can help. I'm assuming there has got to be a simple solution that I'm overlooking, but I've spent countless hours messing around with this and always get back to the same results....
I am using a custom UIView to take a snapshot of the current view and tint it with a color.
The tricky part is that the image changes every half second, whereas most people trying to do this out there are using static images from what I've seen.
The code performs the task correctly except that it continually allocates until memory runs out.
I have tried creating the custom UIView programmatically then as a property that I released, then I tried using IB ( and various combinations) in an attempt to stop the allocating... can't seem to stop it. Currently defined in IB and declared as a property.. released in -dealloc....
I have also tried using a separate image property and drawing or setting background to that in the custom view but to no avail.
If I comment out the line where I change the background image, no memory problems.....
Here's what I'm currently doing in the superview... the blendView object is sized and laid out in IB:
(code has been simplified for example purposes, and I've left in some commented out code showing other things I've tried)
TintView.h:
#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
@class BlendView;
@interface TintView : UIView {
IBOutlet BlendView *blendView;
@property (nonatomic,retain) IBOutlet BlendView *blendView;
TintView.m
#import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h>
@implementation TintView
@synthesize blendView;
- (void) blendTheView { // gets called every half second as the image gets updated
blendView.hidden = YES; //hide blendView so we can make a new one
blendView.theColor = [UIColor colorRed];
UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(self.bounds.size);
[self.layer renderInContext:UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()];
blendView.backgroundColor = [UIColor colorWithPatternImage:UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext()];
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();
blendView.hidden = NO;
- (void)dealloc {
[blendView release];
[super dealloc];
And here's the definition of the class:
BlendView.h:
#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
@interface BlendView : UIView {
UIColor *theColor;
@property (nonatomic, readwrite, retain) UIColor *theColor;
@end
BlendView.m:
#import "BlendView.h"
#import "TintView.h"
@implementation BlendView
@synthesize theColor;
- (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame {
if ((self = [super initWithFrame:frame])) {
// Initialization code
theColor = [UIColor redColor];
return self;
- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect {
//self.backgroundColor = [UIColor colorWithPatternImage:theImage]; // works, but allocs infinitely. just like when assigned from super view
//[theImage drawInRect:rect]; // makes a distorted image (too short and too wide) - also doesn't update the image each time
//CG Method:: :::: (works, but more code than the UI method)
CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
CGContextSaveGState(context);
CGContextSetBlendMode (context, kCGBlendModeMultiply);
CGContextSetFillColor(context, CGColorGetComponents(theColor.CGColor));
CGContextFillRect (context, rect);
CGContextRestoreGState(context);
// UI Method:: ::: (seems to work just as good as the CG method above)
[theColor set];
UIRectFillUsingBlendMode(self.bounds, kCGBlendModeMultiply);
- (void)dealloc {
[super dealloc];
@end

Answer 1

Well, after countless hours of experimenting with allocs and releases I have determined that there must be a hidden alloc that you just can't do anything about whenever you set a UIView's background color to a pattern image.. even if you release the UIView..... oh well....
Funny thing is, upon re-visiting some earlier code you'll see commented out, I got it to work with no problems.
If anyone is curious, I went back to declaring a UIImage property, "theImage" in my BlendView class
I pass the snapshot to the image property and in the -drawRect method I went back to using the line:
[theImage drawInRect:rect];
I don't know why it was distorting and remaining static for updates when I first tried this line out, but it is now working perfectly with no extra allocs