How to draw an NSImage, but fade out to the side (linear alpha gradient)?

I have an image that is generated as an NSImage, and then I draw it into my NSView subclass, using a custom draw() method.

I want to modify this custom view so that the image is drawn in the same place, but it fades out on the side. That is, it's drawn as a linear gradient, from alpha=1.0 to alpha=0.0.

My best guess is one of the draw() variants with NSCompositingOperation might help me do what I want, but I'm having trouble understanding how they could do this. I'm not a graphics expert, and the NSImage and NSCompositingOperation docs seem to be using different terminology.

The quick version: pretty much this question but on macOS instead of Android.

Solution

You're on the right track. You'll want to use NSCompositingOperationDestinationOut to achieve this. That will effectively punch out the destination based on the alpha of the source being drawn. So if you first draw your image and then draw a gradient from alpha 0.0 to 1.0 with the .destinationOut operation on top, you'll end up with your image with alpha 1.0 to 0.0

Because that punch out happens to whatever is already in the backing store where the gradient is being drawn to, you'll want to be careful where/how you use it.

If you want to do this all within the drawing of the view, you should do the drawing of your image and the punch out gradient within a transparency layer using CGContextBeginTransparencyLayer and CGContextEndTransparencyLayer to prevent punching out anything else.
You could also first create a new NSImage to represent this faded variant, either using the drawingHandler constructor or NSCustomImageRep and doing the same image & gradient drawing within there (without worrying about transparency layers). And then draw that image into your view, or simply use that image with an NSImageView.