How to Select and Crop Image on Android

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Sometimes when creating an Android app that includes user profile picture or avatar, we need to include a feature that enables users to select and crop image to update their profile picture. On Android we can accomplish that by using intent to open image cropper app. To select an image from files, we can pass an intent to image gallery or file manager app then pass the selected image path to camera app to crop the image. It is also the same if we want to take a picture from camera, by passing an intent to camera app to open the camera, take a picture than save it to specified Uri then crop it.

I’ve created a sample project to show how to select and crop image from files or from camera. The source files can be downloaded from my github repository (see the bottom if this post).

MainActivity.java

 final String [] items	      = new String [] {"Take from camera", "Select from Gallery"};
 ArrayAdapter<String> adapter = new ArrayAdapter<String> (this, android.R.layout.select_dialog_item,items);
 AlertDialog.Builder builder  = new AlertDialog.Builder(this);

 builder.setTitle("Select Image");
 builder.setAdapter( adapter, new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
    public void onClick( DialogInterface dialog, int item ) { //pick from camer
	if (item == 0) {
	    Intent intent = new Intent(MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);

	    mImageCaptureUri = Uri.fromFile(new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory(),
				 "tmp_avatar_" + String.valueOf(System.currentTimeMillis()) + ".jpg"));

	    intent.putExtra(android.provider.MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, mImageCaptureUri);

	    try {
		intent.putExtra("return-data", true);

		startActivityForResult(intent, PICK_FROM_CAMERA);
	    } catch (ActivityNotFoundException e) {
		e.printStackTrace();
	    }
       } else { //pick from file
	   Intent intent = new Intent();

	   intent.setType("image/*");
	   intent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_GET_CONTENT);

	   startActivityForResult(Intent.createChooser(intent, "Complete action using"), PICK_FROM_FILE);
       }
    }
 } );

final AlertDialog dialog = builder.create();

Button button 	= (Button) findViewById(R.id.btn_crop);
mImageView	= (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.iv_photo);

button.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
   @Override
   public void onClick(View v) {
	dialog.show();
   }
});

Line 1: In this example, i use a selector dialog to display two image source options, from camera ‘Take from camera’ and from existing files ‘Select from gallery’

Line 9: To take a photo from camera, pass intent action ‘MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE‘ to open the camera app.
Line 11: Also specify the Uri to save the image on specified path and file name. Note that this Uri variable also used by gallery app to hold the selected image path.
Line 24-29: To select an image from existing files, use Intent.createChooser to open image chooser. Android will automatically display a list of supported applications, such as image gallery or file manager.

@Override
protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
   if (resultCode != RESULT_OK) return;
       switch (requestCode) {
          case PICK_FROM_CAMERA:
	     doCrop();
             break;

          case PICK_FROM_FILE:
	     mImageCaptureUri = data.getData();

             doCrop();

             break;

Line 10: After taking a picture, do the crop
Line 6: After selecting image from files, save the selected path

private void doCrop() {
		final ArrayList<CropOption> cropOptions = new ArrayList<CropOption>();

    	Intent intent = new Intent("com.android.camera.action.CROP");
        intent.setType("image/*");

        List<ResolveInfo> list = getPackageManager().queryIntentActivities( intent, 0 );

        int size = list.size();

        if (size == 0) {
        	Toast.makeText(this, "Can not find image crop app", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();

            return;
        } else {
        	intent.setData(mImageCaptureUri);

            intent.putExtra("outputX", 200);
            intent.putExtra("outputY", 200);
            intent.putExtra("aspectX", 1);
            intent.putExtra("aspectY", 1);
            intent.putExtra("scale", true);
            intent.putExtra("return-data", true);

        	if (size == 1) {
        		Intent i 		= new Intent(intent);
	        	ResolveInfo res	= list.get(0);

	        	i.setComponent( new ComponentName(res.activityInfo.packageName, res.activityInfo.name));

	        	startActivityForResult(i, CROP_FROM_CAMERA);
        	} else {
		        for (ResolveInfo res : list) {
		        	final CropOption co = new CropOption();

		        	co.title 	= getPackageManager().getApplicationLabel(res.activityInfo.applicationInfo);
		        	co.icon		= getPackageManager().getApplicationIcon(res.activityInfo.applicationInfo);
		        	co.appIntent= new Intent(intent);

		        	co.appIntent.setComponent( new ComponentName(res.activityInfo.packageName, res.activityInfo.name));

		            cropOptions.add(co);
		        }

		        CropOptionAdapter adapter = new CropOptionAdapter(getApplicationContext(), cropOptions);

		        AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(this);
		        builder.setTitle("Choose Crop App");
		        builder.setAdapter( adapter, new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
		            public void onClick( DialogInterface dialog, int item ) {
		                startActivityForResult( cropOptions.get(item).appIntent, CROP_FROM_CAMERA);
		            }
		        });

		        builder.setOnCancelListener( new DialogInterface.OnCancelListener() {
		            @Override
		            public void onCancel( DialogInterface dialog ) {

		                if (mImageCaptureUri != null ) {
		                    getContentResolver().delete(mImageCaptureUri, null, null );
		                    mImageCaptureUri = null;
		                }
		            }
		        } );

		        AlertDialog alert = builder.create();

		        alert.show();
        	}
        }
	}

Line 4: Open image crop app by starting an intent ‘com.android.camera.action.CROP‘.
Line 7: Check if there is image cropper app installed.
Line 11: If there is no image cropper app, display warning message
Line 16-23: Specify the image path, crop dimension and scale
Line 25: There is posibility when more than one image cropper app exist, so we have to check for it first. If there is only one app, open then app.
Line 33-68. If there are several app exist, create a custom chooser to let user selects the app.

@Override
	protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
	    if (resultCode != RESULT_OK) return;

	    switch (requestCode) {

		    case CROP_FROM_CAMERA:
		        Bundle extras = data.getExtras();

		        if (extras != null) {
		            Bitmap photo = extras.getParcelable("data");

		            mImageView.setImageBitmap(photo);
		        }

		        File f = new File(mImageCaptureUri.getPath());

		        if (f.exists()) f.delete();

		        break;

Line 11: After cropping the image, get the bitmap of the cropped image and display it on imageview.
Line 16: Delete the temporary image

Download source code (github)

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