Top-notch video tutorials for Swift developers

One really useful UIView subclass I generally have on all my projects is a simple GradientView. You give it two colors and optionally some location values and it draws a gradient from top to bottom. In this episode we build this so that we can integrate a fade to black effect to overlay on top of the background image.

Sometimes we need to create variants of our icons. This can be done by using template images and using a UIImageView with a tintColor change, however sometimes this isn't feasible. We can use our icons along with a mask to create new images of whatever color we want. In this episode we'll use UIGraphicsImageRenderer to quickly draw a new dimmed image for a highlighted button state.

In this episode we create some more custom @IBDesignable views, this time for a padded genre label where we use the intrinsicContentSize to make a label take up more space and give itself a little padding. We also create a separator view that draws a thin line to separate sections visually.

In this episode we create a custom UIView subclass that draws a gradient overlay. This allows us to overlap the podcast information above the artwork slightly.

We get smarter about drawing, this time leveraging a custom path so we can display non-rectangular outlines.

Core Graphics is a cross-platform technology, but there are some gotchas to consider when working on mac apps with AppKit. Sam will go over some of these differences to help you avoid some common pitfalls.

In this episode we’ll learn how to draw images with core graphics, then watermark a photo by drawing text overlaid on top of it.

In this episode we’ll leverage what we've learned to create a reusable control that will show progress as a path outlining a circle, complete with animation.

In this video we’ll learn how to use custom drawing with CALayers to support implicit animations.

Occasionally you will want to do some custom drawing, but not have that presented directly on the screen. Sometimes this is to "bake" the drawing into an image for faster scrolling performance (a single flattened image can be sent to the GPU easily without having to composite a bunch of views together). This is also often used to resize images that are too large for the intended view. This episode covers drawing to a custom context offscreen and obtaining an image out of it.

In this episode, Sam shows how to draw text using Core Graphics. With this technique you can easily add text to images for pre-rendering, a technique we will see in another episode in this series.

Sam shows how to use Core Graphics to draw images, which you might want to do if you want to blend techniques we’ve seen so far, such as clipping paths or gradients. Drawing images with Core Graphics is also useful to resize images if needed (perhaps if the API is returning one that is too large and you want to cache a thumbnail on device). You’ll also learn about a handy function to help you with aspect ratio math!

Transforms allow you to draw things rotated, moved, or scaled differently than you specified. You can use this technique to reuse drawing operations where they only differ by some small factor (like drawing lines on a graph), to tilt things like text, or to correct issues where the drawn element is upside down or sideways. In this episode, Sam shares a helpful technique of drawing a grid with a highlighted "origin square" to make it obvious what the transforms are doing.

Clipping paths allow you to control where drawing occurs by providing a path in which to limit future drawing operations. Since you can create arbitrary shapes with CGMutablePath (and UIBezierPath) this can be an essential technique to get the drawing effect in some situations.

Gradients are slowly returning to be part of the common iOS design aesthetic once again (after iOS 7 introduced an entirely flat design paradigm). Subtle gradients can be used to create interesting designs, provide necessary contrast for drawing text on top of photos, and provide a realistic feel to custom controls. Learn how to create linear and radial gradients, how to define custom locations to control the position and "shape" of the gradient.

What are color spaces? Sam discusses the common color spaces you might use and what they are used for. Why would you use these methods instead of just using UIColor? If you want cross-platform compatible drawing code, you’ll want to know how this works.

Learn the basics of UIBezierPath and CGPathRef for representing drawing operations as a primitive type. Paths are incredibly useful to drawing and can be used to represent arbitrary lines, curves, and shapes.

Learn how to create basic shapes using Core Graphics. We’ll start by creating a playground that we can use to quickly see the results of our work.

Sam introduces the new series on Core Graphics, what to expect, and what the series covers.

Wrapping up our custom download button, this time we focus on the highlighted image and depressed state of the button, as well as transitioning to and from the progress layer.

In this episode we create a custom control to serve as our download button. We start by creating a circular progress indicator using CAShapeLayer, then move on to subclassing UIControl to provide our image view and touch handling.

In this episode we examine the scrolling performance of our activity ring views. We see that framerate suffers when scrolling quickly, then apply a few changes to bring scrolling performance back to 60 frames per second.

Let‘s attempt to recreate Activity++, an application by _David Smith. The app features a number of interesting interface elements that would be interesting to try to build ourselves! In this part we'll start out by replicating the ring views for a given day.

Have you ever wondered how bezier paths work? What are the control points, and how exactly do they affect the line? In this episode we'll build our own visualization of how a bézier path is constructed to help understand it better.