Comments on: UIImagePickerController returning nil image

By: Matt Galloway

Matt Galloway — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:29:45 +0000

@andrewprocter – One way I heard to do it was to force a memory warning by allocating lots of things which then forces background apps (Mail, Safari, etc) to close which will then leave enough memory for the image picker.

The other thing… we could all submit bug reports!

By: andrewprocter

andrewprocter — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:11:16 +0000

Hi, I’m having the same issue (using both “didFinishPickingImage” and “didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo”. Has anyone solved this yet? I can’t seem to get anywhere with it, but people are downloading an app of mine and complaining that it happens right away. Some sort of global memory problem?

By: CharlieUK1977

CharlieUK1977 — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:25:50 +0000

Im getting the exact same problem too. Using the new “media” method and again if I switch off the iPhone and switch it back on it always works…

…on one site it was recommended you create a singleton within the app delegate for the uiimagepicker, but cant seem to get that to work either :-/

By: admin

admin — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:23:04 +0000

Yes, this issue is because the memory becomes full. You’ll probably be seeing memory warnings being sent to your objects. You can detect this and handle it properly, but unfortunately there’s not really much that you can do to stop it returning nil, except for releasing some memory from your app such that there is enough available for the image picker to return properly.

If I ever get round to debugging it more then I will post an update.

By: gamerpig

gamerpig — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:20:12 +0000

I’m also running into the same issue on iPhone 3G. If I reboot the phone, it works. The funny thing is that UIImagePickerController always returns a good image when getting photo from album. However, if the source is camera, I get a nil image until I reboot the phone.

By: Matt Galloway

Matt Galloway — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:42:06 +0000

Hi Toby,

I never did find out a solution to the problem, but I’m fairly sure it’s RAM related. I never get it on an iPhone 3GS but it happens all the time on an iPhone 3G. The fix on the 3G is to turn it off and back on, which clears the RAM obviously, so I guess it has to be a RAM issue (and that makes sense anyway).

Not sure if there is a work-around but I really should file a bug with Apple one day. There’s been far too many devs which have come across the problem now!

By: Toby Compton

Toby Compton — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:29:24 +0000

I am too experiencing this problem, and I am using the new delegate method. The strange thing is that most of the time it works just fine, just occasionally (Not even after selecting an image multiple times) it returns a nil image.

I am using the original image, and resizing my self as I didn’t like the crop from image picker. I am releasing the picker correctly.

Did you ever find a solution to this?

Thanks