Apple Developer Connection
Advanced Search
Member Login Log In | Not a Member? Contact ADC

Graphics & Imaging
Quartz

Quartz is a powerful graphics system which forms the foundation of the imaging model for Mac OS X. Quartz offers a sophisticated two-dimensional drawing engine and an advanced windowing environment. Quartz's feature-rich drawing engine leverages the Portable Document Format (PDF) drawing model and offers Mac OS X applications professional-strength drawing functionality. Quartz's windowing services provide low-level functionality like window buffering, event handling/dispatch as well as dynamically creating the translucency and drop shadow effects found in the Aqua user interface.

Articles

Making modo a Great Mac Application
When Luxology set out to create a platform that delivered 3D modeling, painting, and rendering, they used Quartz and OpenGL to create a user-driven, fluid interface that's highly adaptable to the individual 3D artist's needs.

Using Python and Quartz on Mac OS X
The combination of rapid development and rich graphics makes Python with Quartz 2D on Mac OS X an excellent platform for graphics processing, dynamic content generation, and PDF document creation.

Documentation

Quartz 2D Programming Guide

Explains how to use the Quartz 2D API for transparency layers, path-based drawing, transformations, offscreen rendering, advanced color management, anti-aliased rendering, patterns, shadings, image data management, image creation, masking, and PDF document creation, display, and parsing.

Quartz Programming Guide for QuickDraw Developers

Provides strategies and guidance to help developers replace QuickDraw code with Quartz 2D.

Quartz Display Services Programming

Quartz Display Services provides direct access to certain low-level features in the Mac OS X window server.

Quartz Reference Library

The Quartz Reference Library contains the Programming Guides and Class References, Release Notes, Tech Notes, Q&As, and sample code to speed your development with the Quartz 2D API.

Mac OS X System Architecture

See how the graphics layer relates to other technologies in the Mac OS X System Architecture diagram.

See Also

Programming With Quartz: 2D and PDF Graphics in Mac OS X

Provides in-depth information on using Quartz. The sample code associated with this book is available from the publisher.

PDF Reference, Second Edition (PDF)

Adobe's Portable Document Format, v1.3 Reference Guide is an indispensable source of information on the PDF format. Of particular interest is Chapter 4, which describes the PDF imaging model in detail.