In my application, I’ve written a custom NSImageRep to handle a proprietary image format. The application’s primary view is an IKImageView, which I intend to load the images I’ve made the custom NSImageRep for into for viewing and manipulation.
If I create a CGImageRef of these images and then pass the reference over to the image view it works fine, but this is not ideal. If possible, I’d like to make use of IKImageView’s setImageWithURL: method, as this is mentioned as being the preferred method by the docs, plus it’s just cleaner. Unfortunately the view seems entirely ignorant of my NSImageRep and simply fails to load the image.
Is there anything that can be done to make the image view understand custom representations?
I think you need to call NSImageRep's registerImageRepClass: sometime early in your app's startup.
I'm fairly sure you also need to implement imageUnfilteredTypes in your sub-class
From: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/ApplicationKit/Classes/NSImageRep_Class/Reference/Reference.html#//apple_ref/occ/clm/NSImageRep/registerImageRepClass: