Way simpler than I had thought: Core Data can save binary NSData objects – all we have to do is declare the attribute as “Binary Data” in our model.

Optionally you can choose to “Allow External Storage” for the attribute, which means that the data is not stored in the database (to be honest, I don’t know where – Core Data takes care of everything). Not a good choice if you plan to export the store file, or populate database changes to other stores via iCloud.

To save an image, we’ll turn it into data and add it to our managed object (Event in my case):

self.myEvent.picture = UIImageJPEGRepresentation(chosenImage, 1);

To retrieve it from Core Data, we’ll do the opposite:

self.imageView.image = [UIImage imageWithData:self.myEvent.picture];

I have tried this successfully in iOS, works like a charm.

In Cocoa however I believe an NSImage needs an NSValueTransformer for this operation.