How to animate the change of image in an UIImageView?

I have an UIImageView with an image. Now I have a completely new image (graphic file), and want to display that in this UIImageView. If I just set

myImageView.image = newImage;

the new image is visible immediately. Not animatable.

I want it to nicely fade into the new image. I thought maybe there's a better solution than just creating a new UIImageView on top of that and blending with animation?

[UIView transitionWithView:textFieldimageView
                  duration:0.2f
                   options:UIViewAnimationOptionTransitionCrossDissolve
                animations:^{
                    imageView.image = newImage;
                } completion:nil];

is another possibility

I am not sure if you can animate UIViews with fade effect as it seems all supported view transitions are defined in UIViewAnimationTransition enumeration. Fading effect can be achieved using CoreAnimation. Sample example for this approach:

#import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h>
...
imageView.image = [UIImage imageNamed:(i % 2) ? @"3.jpg" : @"4.jpg"];

CATransition *transition = [CATransition animation];
transition.duration = 1.0f;
transition.timingFunction = [CAMediaTimingFunction functionWithName:kCAMediaTimingFunctionEaseInEaseOut];
transition.type = kCATransitionFade;

[imageView.layer addAnimation:transition forKey:nil];

In the words of Michael Scott, keep it simple stupid. Here is a simple way to do this in Swift 3 and Swift 4:

UIView.transition(with: imageView,
                  duration: 0.75,
                  options: .transitionCrossDissolve,
                  animations: { self.imageView.image = toImage },
                  completion: nil)

Here is one example in Swift that will first cross dissolve a new image and then add a bouncy animation:

var selected: Bool {
  willSet(selected) {
    let expandTransform:CGAffineTransform = CGAffineTransformMakeScale(1.15, 1.15);
    if (!self.selected && selected) {
      UIView.transitionWithView(self.imageView,
        duration:0.1,
        options: UIViewAnimationOptions.TransitionCrossDissolve,
        animations: {
          self.imageView.image = SNStockCellSelectionAccessoryViewImage(selected)
          self.imageView.transform = expandTransform
        },
        completion: {(finished: Bool) in
          UIView.animateWithDuration(0.4,
            delay:0.0,
            usingSpringWithDamping:0.40,
            initialSpringVelocity:0.2,
            options:UIViewAnimationOptions.CurveEaseOut,
            animations: {
              self.imageView.transform = CGAffineTransformInvert(expandTransform)
            }, completion:nil)
      })
    }
  }
}

var imageView:UIImageView

If imageView is correctly added to the view as a subview, toggling between selected = false to selected = true should swap the image with a bouncy animation. SNStockCellSelectionAccessoryViewImage just returns a different image based on the current selection state, see below:

private let SNStockCellSelectionAccessoryViewPlusIconSelected:UIImage = UIImage(named:"PlusIconSelected")!
private let SNStockCellSelectionAccessoryViewPlusIcon:UIImage = UIImage(named:"PlusIcon")!

private func SNStockCellSelectionAccessoryViewImage(selected:Bool) -> UIImage {
  return selected ? SNStockCellSelectionAccessoryViewPlusIconSelected : SNStockCellSelectionAccessoryViewPlusIcon
}

The GIF example below is a bit slowed down, the actual animation happens faster: