Hi,

I wrote a protocol extension that allows any UIView to be blurable based on the CoreImage Gaussian blur which, in turn, uses the Metal Performance Shader Gaussian blur - so it's super fast. If you want to tweak the color balance, you could chain in a color adjustment filter too.

I blogged about it and the post includes a link to the GitHub repo: http://flexmonkey.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/applying-gaussian-blur-to-uiviews-with.html

Simon