iPhone UILabel text soft shadow

Question

I know soft shadows are not supported by the UILabel out of the box  on the iPhone  So what would be the best way to implement my own one   EDIT   Obviously I will subclass the UILabel and draw in the -drawRect  My question is  how do I get the contents of the label as graphics and draw around them  blur them etc     EDIT 2   I returned to this question about a year later  In the meantime I ve built a class that allows you to easily add soft shadow to a label and tweak it s radius etc and also to draw gradients on the text itself  You can find it on GitHub  https   github com doukasd iOS-Components tree master Views

User · Answer

Additionally to IIDan s answer  For some purposes it is necessary to set   label layer shouldRasterize   YES   I think this is due to the blend mode that is used to render the shadow  For example I had a dark background and white text on it and wanted to  highlight  the text using a black shadowy glow  It wasn t working until I set this property

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While it s impossible to set a blur radius directly on UILabel  you definitely could change it by manipulating CALayer    Just set     Required properties customLabel layer shadowRadius   5 0   set shadow radius to your desired value  customLabel layer shadowOpacity   1 0   Choose an opacity  Make sure it s visible  default is 0 0     Other options customLabel layer shadowOffset   CGSize width  10  height  10  customLabel layer shadowColor   UIColor black cgColor customLabel layer masksToBounds   false   What I hope will help someone and other answers failed to clarify is that it will not work if you also set UILabel Shadow Color property directly on Interface Builder while trying to setup  layer shadowRadius    So if setting label layer shadowRadius didn t work  please verify Shadow Color for this UILabel on Interface Builder  It should be set to default  And then  please  if you want a shadow color other than black  set this color also through  layer property

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This answer to this similar question provides code for drawing a blurred shadow behind a UILabel   The author uses CGContextSetShadow   to generate the shadow for the drawn text

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This like a trick   UILabel  customLabel     UILabel alloc  init    UIColor  color    UIColor blueColor   customLabel layer shadowColor    color CGColor   customLabel layer shadowRadius   5 0f  customLabel layer shadowOpacity   1  customLabel layer shadowOffset   CGSizeZero  customLabel layer masksToBounds   NO

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As of 3 2 there is direct support for shadows in the SDK  label layer shadowColor    label textColor CGColor   label layer shadowOffset   CGSizeMake 0 0  0 0     import  lt QuartzCore QuartzCore h gt  and play with some parameters  label layer shadowRadius   3 0  label layer shadowOpacity   0 5   And  if you find your shadow clipped by the label bounds  label layer masksToBounds   NO   finally set label layer shouldRasterize   YES

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As of iOS 5 Apple provides a private api method to create labels with soft shadows  The labels are very fast  I m using dozens at the same time in a series of transparent views and there is no slowdown in scrolling animation   This is only useful for non-App Store apps  obviously  and you need the header file    SBBulletinBlurredShadowLabel   NSClassFromString  SBBulletinBlurredShadowLabel     CGRect frame   CGRectZero   SBBulletinBlurredShadowLabel  label       SBBulletinBlurredShadowLabel alloc  initWithFrame frame  autorelease   label backgroundColor    UIColor clearColor   label textColor    UIColor whiteColor   label font    UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize 12   label text     I am a label with a soft shadow     label sizeToFit

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To keep things up to date  Creating the shadow in Swift is as easy as that   Import the QuartzCore Framework  import QuartzCore   And set the shadow attributes to your label  titleLabel shadowColor   UIColor blackColor   titleLabel shadowOffset   CGSizeMake 0 0  0 0  titleLabel layer shadowRadius   5 0 titleLabel layer shadowOpacity   0 8 titleLabel layer masksToBounds   false titleLabel layer shouldRasterize   true

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nameLabel     UILabel alloc  initWithFrame CGRectZero    nameLabel font    UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize 19 0f    nameLabel textColor    UIColor whiteColor    nameLabel backgroundColor    UIColor clearColor    nameLabel shadowColor    UIColor colorWithWhite 0 alpha 0 2    nameLabel shadowOffset   CGSizeMake 0  1     i think you should use the  UIColor colorWithWhite 0 alpha 0 2  to set the alpha value

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Apply the  soft  shadow on the view s layer  like this   UILabel  label     UIabel alloc  init   label layer shadowColor     UIColor whiteColor  CGColor   label layer shadowOpacity   1 0

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I advise you to use the shadowColor and shadowOffset properties of UILabel   UILabel  label     UILabel alloc  init   label shadowColor    UIColor whiteColor   label shadowOffset   CGSizeMake 0 1

User · Answer

In Swift 3  you can create an extension   import UIKit  extension UILabel       func shadow             self layer shadowColor   self textColor cgColor         self layer shadowOffset   CGSize zero         self layer shadowRadius   3 0         self layer shadowOpacity   0 5         self layer masksToBounds   false         self layer shouldRasterize   true           and use it via   label shadow

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Subclass UILabel  and override -drawInRect

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I wrote a library that provides a UILabel subclass with soft shadow support and a bunch of other effects   https   github com nicklockwood FXLabel

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Subclass UILabel  as stated  then  in drawRect   do  self drawTextInRect rect   to get the text drawn into the current context  Once it is in there  you can start working with it by adding filters and whatnot  If you want to make a drop shadow with what you just drew into the context  you should be able to use   CGContextSetShadowWithColor     Look that function up in the docs to learn how to use it

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I tried almost all of these techniques  except FXLabel  and couldn t get any of them to work with iOS 7   I did eventually find THLabel which is working perfectly for me   I used THLabel in Interface Builder and setup User Defined Runtime Attributes so that it s easy for a non programmer to control the look and feel   https   github com MuscleRumble THLabel

[iphone] iPhone UILabel text soft shadow

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