How to set the alpha of an UIImage in SWIFT programmatically?

Luckily I was able to help myself and would like to share with you my solution:

Swift 3

// UIImage+Alpha.swift

extension UIImage {  

    func alpha(_ value:CGFloat) -> UIImage {
        UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(size, false, scale)
        draw(at: CGPoint.zero, blendMode: .normal, alpha: value)
        let newImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext()
        UIGraphicsEndImageContext()
        return newImage!   
    }
}

The above new Swift extension I added to my project and then I changed the UIButton example as follows, to have an alpha transparent background image with a transparency of 50%.

let img = UIImage(named: "imageWithoutAlpha")!.alpha(0.5)
let myButton = UIButton()

myButton.setBackgroundImage(img, for: .normal)