Technologies›Area 3

Graphics, Imaging & Compositing

22 frameworks

The Graphics, Imaging & Compositing area provides the frameworks that draw, process, and present visual content across Apple platforms. These frameworks span 2D vector drawing and text layout, GPU rendering and compute, image reading and processing, and layer-based animation and compositing. Together they let your app generate pixels efficiently, manage color and image data, and composite the results onto the screen.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

No frameworks match.

CoreGraphics105 types

Quartz 2D drawing engine for paths, contexts, colors, images, fonts, gradients and PDF rendering.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

Low-level GPU API for rendering and compute, including Metal 4 command buffers, acceleration structures and argument tables.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

CoreImage44 types

GPU-accelerated image processing and analysis with built-in filters, kernels, RAW processing, and feature/barcode detection.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

QuartzCore64 types

Core Animation layers, animations, display links, and compositing for high-performance hardware-accelerated graphics.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

ApplicationServices124 types

Umbrella framework bundling Core Graphics, ATS font/text layout, ColorSync and HIServices application-level graphics services on macOS.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

ColorSync7 types

Low-level color management API for ICC profiles and color transforms between device color spaces.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

CoreText163 types

Low-level text layout and font handling engine for laying out, shaping and rendering Unicode text with full typographic control.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

FoveatedStreaming7 types

Manages a foveated streaming connection to a local or remote rendering endpoint (visionOS).

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

Low-level composite vector-shape rendering primitives: part loaders, renderers, segment points, and shape/composite writers.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

ImageIO11 types

Reads, writes, animates, and inspects image data and metadata across many file formats via CGImageSource/Destination.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

IOSurface11 types

Provides shareable hardware-accelerated image buffers (surfaces) for passing pixel data efficiently between processes and the GPU.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

MetalFX18 types

Upscaling and frame-interpolation effects that generate higher-resolution textures in a Metal render pass via spatial and temporal analysis.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

MetalKit8 types

Utilities around Metal: a drawable view, texture loading, and ModelIO model handling for GPU rendering.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

MetalPerformancePrimitives

Provides Metal GPU tensor operation primitives such as 2D convolution and matrix multiplication for high-performance compute.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

MetalPerformanceShaders500 types

GPU-accelerated Metal kernels for image processing, linear algebra, and neural-network primitives optimized per device.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

Legacy OpenGL and CGL APIs for GPU-accelerated 2D and 3D graphics rendering on macOS.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

OpenGLES4 types

Legacy OpenGL ES rendering API with EAGL contexts for hardware-accelerated 2D and 3D graphics on iOS.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

ParavirtualizedGraphics8 types

Provides paravirtualized GPU device and display support for accelerated graphics in virtual machines via Metal.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

Display, edit and manipulate PDF documents with views, pages, annotations, actions, outlines and built-in find interaction.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

Umbrella imaging framework bundling ImageKit, PDFKit, Quartz Composer, and related image, PDF, and graphics editing UI components.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

QuickLookThumbnailing6 types

Generates thumbnail and icon image representations of files in various sizes and qualities.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

Symbols20 types

Defines symbol effects (Appear, Bounce, and more) that animate SF Symbols images across the system.

iOSmacOStvOSwatchOSvisionOS

← All technologies