I usually do not care much about my assets even if I support the iPads in my project. As long as the imageView for the background of the app is set to Aspect Fill.
Also, here are some links I've found, but not so related to this question.
OLD Question and old answers: How to support both iPad and iPhone retina graphics in universal apps
Cool question and cool answers, however, question and answers focus merely in iPhones:
iOS: Preparing background images for applications
Going back to the question, if I have an Adobe XD file or Sketch, or Photoshop or whatever file that lets me export an image/asset, in what resolution should I start? Do I start with the largest possible size (for iPad Pro) which is 1024x1366 then let the software cut the sizes into #1x and #2x?
If I'm only to support the iPhones, then this would be way lots easier. Thank you!
If your source is vector based, then (obviously?) it's a non-issue...
With bitmap / raster images, you almost always get better results by scaling down.
Depending on the image itself (a photo tends to scale much better than a line-drawing), you may not be happy with simple "auto-gen" features... in which case, you'd need to manually "scale and tweak".
(Hope that helps).
Related
I have three characters and one background for an iOS game. I'm using Photoshop to develop these assets. Do I need to develop all the characters and background in #3x and then use the option in Photoshop to make the same image #2x? What would the PPI for each asset be?
If you have only #3x images, iOS will have to resize to fit.
Two possible downsides are, (1) it definitely takes time, (2) image quality may not be what you want. Advantage is that the app bundle size may be smaller.
Now, these downsides above are clearly app dependent (image size, etc.). You can examine with the real device and see how it works.
But usually, we don't have many kinds of real devices. So to have both #3x and #2x is the safe bet. See other comments here and Apple's guidline here. Screen resolution is found at this Apples doc.
I am into iOS development from past 1+ months and what I have experienced is that I have to put images for 1x 2x 3x for iphone and then 2x retina for ipad. One of the experienced designers has sugguested to me to go for svg format as it scales itself according to the screen sizes.
So my elaborated questions are:
Can I use svg instead of png?
Is it necessary to still put images in 2x and 3x for iphone and ipad if I'm using svg?
Will the images in svg scale according to the phone size and not lose quality?
If any other information according to your experience please share.
Thank you.
Official iOS Dev documentation says "the PNG format is the one most recommended for use in your apps". You can read it for a lot more information here.
Yes, although the supported file types table doesn't list it. Apple values user experience. SVG scaling consumes a few more CPU cycles which they don't like. PNG rendering is more efficient than SVG.
Yes, Apple explicitly recommends using multiple versions of the image at different sizes. Then scaling can be done from the file having the nearest dimensions.
Refer 1. There are cases like zoom-in / out scenarios where SVGs would be better though.
You could use vectorized PDFs alternatively. You can read more here. It isn't without limitations, but with vectorized PDFs, Xcode automatically generates scaled versions. That should make life easier. Note that sometimes the scaled results look quite poor.
I am new to iOS programming and programming in general so this will probably be a fairly easy question to answer for someone who is experienced.
I am making a game using sprite kit and I need to include different background image sizes for the different retina display sizes on the iPhone 4 and 5. I am using a graphics package to create the images in .png format then adding them into the project, the issue I have is that, if I make a 640x1136 size image, it works on the 5, and if I use a 640x960, it works fine on the 4 but leaves blank space around the edge on the 5. (I am running it on the simulator)
If I include two identical images with different names, one for each device, how can I load the right one in? Do I only need high resolution image and can use some code to change how it loads the image in, so that it covers the whole screen without pixelation or loss of quality on both devices?
Any help or advice is appreciated. I apologise if this is a simple question, thanks for your time.
Note:
I found out plenty on the internet about using the #2x suffix for high resolution images, but that's not what I'm looking for. I know how to code for different resolutions, just not two different screen sizes with the same resolution, if that makes any sense.
If you're on iOS 7 SDK which you most likely are, make use of the .xcassets catalogue. It has options for different screen sizes, put the different versions of your image there. And then load image in code.
I am developing a cocos2d game. I need to make it universal. Problem is that I want to use minimun amount of images to keep the universal binary as small as possible. Is there any possibility that I can use same images I am using for iphone, retina and iPad somehow? If yes, how can I do that? What image size and quality should it be? Any suggestion?
Thanks and Best regards
As for suggestions: provide HD resolution images for Retina devices and iPad, provide SD resolution images for non-Retina devices. Don't think about an all-in-one solution - there isn't one that's acceptable.
Don't upscale SD images to HD resolution on Retina devices or iPad. It won't look any better.
Don't downscale HD images for non-Retina devices. Your textures will still use 4x the memory on devices that have half or even a quarter of the memory available. In addition, downscaling images is bad for performance because it has to be done by the CPU on older devices. While you could downscale the image and save the downscaled texture, it adds a lot more complexity to your code and will increase the loading time.
There's not a single right answer to this question. One way to do it is to create images that are larger than you need and then scale them down. If the images don't have a lot of fine detail, that should work pretty well. As an example, this is the reason that you submit a 512x512 pixel image of your app icon along with your app to the App Store. Apple never displays the image at that size, but uses it to create a variety of smaller sizes for display in the App Store.
Another approach is to use vector images, which you can draw perfectly at any size that you need. Unfortunately, the only vector format that I can think of that's supported in iOS is PDF.
I am developing an iphone application and i am using a background picture for my app. I know that before iphone 4 , the resolution of the screen was 480x320 and after 960x640. I read that i should use 2 images like : MyImage.png and MyImage#2x.png with the 2 different resolutions and the app will know which one to choose according to the phone. My question is very simple. If i just use the 960x480 , whats the difference? I am developing on an iphone 3gs and i am using this resolution and everything works perfect. So why have a small resolution for these phones?
The difference, in my opinion, is the following: the phone is going to resize the doubled-resolution to half the size, and this will lead to (1) the final image is not as smooth as if you would have exported it from a image application like Illustrator or Photoshop - at least from my own experience, when I export both resolutions, in non retina devices, the images don't look as good if I had exported the normal resolution. Also (2) the device will waste time/performance to make this conversion, although I don't know how much it is significant. And (3) finally, you may overload memory with no need, considering that the doubled sized images are bigger files, and you could use smaller files instead.
If you don't mind about this issues, you can go ahead. Try yourself.
If nothing else, the high-resolution images will tax the memory much more. One full-screen image at 320✕480 is around 600K in memory, whereas the 640✕960 is almost 2.5M, four times as much. On the older devices the memory is much more scarce than on the new ones and you might run into problems later in the development cycle, when there are more resources in play.
Even if you are able to test the app on all older supported devices and you can guarantee that there are no immediate performance problems or visual glitches, the app will take more memory, forcing the OS to kill other apps more frequently (= worse overall user experience).
if you use one version of image, (960x640) , there will be a memory overhead when the app run on non-retina. you dont need to display the high res in non-retina, only in retina display, making two versions of images .png and #2x.png will tell ios which image version it should load, depends on what device is currently in use.