When adding images to an iOS project, what size should the 1x image be?
For example:
If I have 2 UIImageView with the same image with a size of 50x50pt and 30x30pt. Can I make one image asset for the both (and which size should this be) or should I make 2 assets ie. image30x30.png and image50x50.png?
This of course extends to images that have a dynamic size (for example 50% of the screen width), which size should they be?
You have 2 options:
Use 1 image and just resize UIImageView
Yes, you should use 2 different assets if 1. won't work for you
When you want to resize an image you must remember 2 things:
you must maintain the h/w ratio of that image.
you must resize to smaller from it's original size otherwise the resized image will look blur .
So, according to your (50x50pt and 30x30pt)images size the best option is to maintain 1 image and it size must be 50x50pt
i) resize this image smaller into 30x30pt
ii) you should not consider image ratio as both image maintain same ratio.(50/50=1 and 30/30 =1)
You have to use 2 different image assets for your UIImageView.
Related
I am having difficulties with retina images.
The screenshot below shows the UICollectionView with a UIImageView contained within each UICollectionViewCell.
Within the app I have a large image 512x512 pixels called travel.png.
The green circle shows what is displayed on the app when I name this file: travel.png. The blue circle shows what I see when I update the image name to be travel#2x.png (i.e. retina naming).
I was hoping due to the large size of the image (512x512) that simply adding the #2x suffix would be enough to convert it to twice the definition (i.e. retina) but as you can see from the two screenshots, both version images show as non-retina.
How can I update the image so that it will display in retina?
travel.png:
travel#2x.png:
* Updated *
Following request in comments below:
I load this image by calling the following function:
// Note - when this method is called: contentMode is set to .scaleAspectFit & imageName is "travel"
public func setImageName(imageName: String, contentMode: ContentMode) {
self.contentMode = contentMode
if let image = UIImage(named: imageName) {
self.image = image
}
}
Here is how the image appears in Xcode before the app renders it (as you can see it is high enough definition):
The reason why you see the low quality image is anti-aliasing. When you provide images bigger then an actual frame of UIImageView (scaleAspectFit mode) the system will automatically downscale them. During scaling some anti-aliasing effects can be added at curve shapes. To avoid the effect you should provide the exact image size you want to display on the screen.
To detect if UIImageView autoscale the image you can switch on Debug->Color Misaligned Images at Simulator menu:
Now all scaled images will highlight at simulator with yellow color. Each highlighted image may have anti-aliasing artifacts and affect CPU usage for scaling algorithms:
To resolve the issue you should use exact sizes. So the system will use them directly without any additional calculations. For example, if your button have 80x80px size you should add three images to assert catalog with following sizes and dpi: 80x80px (72 dpi), 160x160px (144 dpi) and 240x240px (216 dpi):
Now the image will be drawn at the screen without downscaling with much better visual quality:
If your intention is to have just one image for all the sizes, I would suggest it having under Assets.xcassets. It is easy to create the folder structures and manage media assets here.
Steps
On clicking + icon, you will displayed a list of actions. Choose to create a New folder.
Choosing the new folder that is created, click on the + icon again and click on New Image Set.
Choose the imageset. And choose the attributes inspector.
Select Single Scale, under Scales.
Drag and drop the image.
Rename the image name and folder names as you wish.
Now you can use this image using the image name for all the screen sizes.
TL;DR;
Change the view layer's minificationFilter to .trilinear
imageView.layer.minificationFilter = .trilinear
as illustrated by the device screenshot below
As Anton's answer correctly pointed out, the aliasing effet you observe is caused by the large difference in dimensions between the source image and the image view it's displayed in. Adding the #2x suffix won't change anything if you do not change the dimensions of the source image itself.
That said there is an easy way to improve the situation without resizing the original image: CALayer offers some control over the method used by the graphics back-end to resize images : minificationFilter and magnificationFilter. The first one is relevant in your case since the image size is being reduced. The default value is CALayerContentsFilter.linear, just switch to .trilinear for a much better result (more info on those wikipedia pages). This will require more GPU power (thus battery), especially if you apply it on many images.
You should really consider resizing the images before displaying them, either statically or at run-time (and maybe cache the resized versions). In addition to the bad visual quality, using such large images in quantities in your UI will decrease performance and waste lots of memory, leading to potentially other issues.
I have fixed, #DarshanKunjadiya issue.
Make sure (if you are already using assets):
Make sure images are not un-assigned
Now use images in storyboard or code without extensions. (e.g. "image" NOT "image.png")
If you are not using images from assets, move them to assets.
Demo Projects
Hope it helps.
Let me know of your feedback.
I think images without the #2x and #3x are rendered for devices with low resolutions (like the iphone 4 an 3G).
The solution I think is to always use the .xcassets file or to add the #2x or #3X in the names of your images.
In iOS, content is placed on the screen based on the iOS coordinate system. for displaying an image on a standard resolution system having 1:1 pixel density we should supply image at #1x resolution. for higher resolution displays the pixel density will be a scale factor of 2.0, 3.0 which refers in the iOS system as #2x and #3x respectively. That is high-resolution displays demands images with higher density.
For example, if you want to display an image of size 128x128 in standard resolution. You have to supply the #2x and #3x size image of the same. ie., 256x256 at #2x version and 384x384 image at #3x version.
In the following screenshot, I have supplied an image of size 256x256 for 2x version to display a 128x128 pixel image in iPhone 6s. iPhone 6s render images at #2x size. Using the three version of images such as 1x, 2x and 3x with asset catalogue will resolve your issues. So the iPhone will automatically render the correct sized image automatically with the screen resolution.
just want to see if I'm on the right track here is understanding the performance trade-offs of placing various image sizes into image views.
If I have a large image, will the image load faster if I place it in a correspondingly large imageView versus placing it in a smaller imageView?
No, the loading time depends on the file, and if the image is large, and its file Size is large, it will load slower than a small images on the same image View.
To make it clear, image view doesn't affect loading performance, image size (File size) does affect performance.
Answering you r question first, size of image is not directly proportional to imageview i.e. regardless of your imageview size, you image will take time based on the size of image.
Now, if you have a task in which you need to show user images & on click you need to share that image, you need to maintain 2 copies for showing take resized copy & while sharing pick image from original position. In this way, your loading will be fast & while sharing you will be able to share original image itself.
We have a background image for our app that needs to be full screen for each device we run the app on. Our problem is the background image is tiling on our iPhone 6S+ (Display Zoom off).
I have drawn in red lines to highlight where the tiling is occurring...
We have created 3 background images of the following sizes...
So, designing for 1x (which is the recommended way to go), our base level 1x background image is 320 pixels wide. Our 2x is 640 pixels, and our 3x is 960 pixels.
The problem is the iPhone 6S+ is 1080 pixels wide and according to this chart, you need to start with a 3x image that is 1242 pixels wide. And this is where I am missing how this is supposed to work.
from https://www.paintcodeapp.com/news/ultimate-guide-to-iphone-resolutions
With the above chart in mind, it seems you need a separate image for each resolution highlighted with a red square in the above image. Is this correct? And if yes, how do you label each individual image so that at runtime the correct one is picked?
Three images, named as you have them for background.png, are all you need.
Now let's talk about image views. They display their image using a content mode. The key thing is to pick the correct mode. Aspect Fill is what you probably want here, because it will fill the image view without distorting the image.
One procedure, then, is to use a bigger image than what you have, and configure the image view that shows the image to use an appropriate content mode such as Aspect Fill, so that it sizes the image down to fit (or, to save memory, at runtime you can size it down yourself).
The other possibility would be to leave your image as it is, and solve the issue on the Plus machines by telling the image view to size the image up to fit, again possibly by using Aspect Fill. That might or might not look acceptable; you'd have to try it and see what you think.
I am making an application which I would like to use the same image for multiple dimensions without stretching or cropping the image.
Can I make different images each supporting a dimension?
You can use contentMode as UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFit of UIImageView's Property.
It will be fit to your imageView, and will not be stretching or cropping.
It will mainain aspect ratio of image.
i.e
imgDevider.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFit;
If you want to prevent stretching, you would have to create a different image for all supported iOS dimensions. Then, using your code, choose the correct image source according to the device's dimension.
Read here about getting the device dimensions.
Read here about changing the image source.
I've been told not to scale down images, but always to use them in their original resolution.
I have a custom UITableViewCell that has a 'Respond Action' on the cell. The UIImageView in Storyboard is 16x16.
Now originally I was using a 256x256 image, and my UIImageView has an Aspect Ratio constraint, and a height constraint of 16.
Then it was suggested to me to not ever scale down images, but to use an image that fit the exact size I needed. So a 16x16 was designed for me, and I used that. It looks awfully blurry though.
The results are here (The font next to it is 11.0 point to give you an idea of it's size):
What is the correct way to go about this? Should you not scale down images? What is the reason? It looks much better than the 16x16.
Scale your image down before adding it to your project...
Take your 256x256 png image and scale it to 1x, 2x, and 3x size.
1x should equal the size that you need your image to display in the view.
2x and 3x will support retina and retina HD displays.
ex:
Name: image.png | Size: 16x16
Name: image#2x.png | Size: 32x32
Name: image#3x.png | Size: 48x48
Drop these images into your Images.xcassets
see: Specifying High-Resolution Images in iOS
also: Icon and Image Sizes
You don't need to scale down images, but it's a good idea. If you're cramming a 256x256 in a 16x16 means the user is downloading 65kb vs <1kb of data. Or if it's in your bundle, then your app is that much 'heavier'.
But it depends what screen resolution you're using. Even an iPhone 4 uses retina, which means your 16x16 image view should contain a 32x32 image. You should also supply a 48x48 for iPhone 6+ screens. This will make your images look great on each screen size.
Use Images.xcassets to manage your images.
You shouldn't scale down the images ideally, but you also need to cosier the screen resolution. Old devices are 1x, retina devices are 2x and he latest iPhone 6 devices use 3x images which means you should have 16x16, 32x32 and 48x48 images to be used by each device (preferably managed in an image asset). What you're seeing at the moment is a 1x image being scaled up to 2x or 3x so it's blurry. Previously you had a large image scaled down which is bad for memory usage but looks sharp.
If you are using an image from your asset catalog, provided to yourself during development. You don't want to scale down images at runtime as it will add unnecessary overhead to your app. Rather have the assets sized to the required dimensions and add them to your xcimage catalog for 1x, 2x and 3x displays. Think optimisation in terms of memory and bundle size, what's the minimum size required to make it work and look good? If your image is being displayed in a 20x20 square, the optimal sizes will always be 20x20, 40x40 and 60x60 for 1x, 2x and 3x displayed.
Now fetching images from the network is an entirely different ballgame. You will find that sometimes you might want to scale down the image, but only when the image you fetch is bigger than what you need to display, like when you're trying to fit in a 2000x2000px image in a 36x26px square. You want to do the scale down for three reasons:
it will reduce virtual memory usage.
it will reduce storage memory if you persist the image.
you will save yourself from image downsampling artifacts that appear when the system tries to render the image at runtime.
Best thing to do here is to scale down the image as soon as you download from the network and before using it anywhere within your app.
Hope this helps!
There is a purist answer for this and then the answer which saves you from spending your life converting images all day.
The following is a discussion on the topic of scaling.
iOS - Different images based on device OR scaling the same image?
If you want to avoid having to create too many images, then using x2 images with a resolution of x2 the expected point size usage is a reasonable compromise as that covers the majority of current devices. You would only then be scaling down for iPhone 3s and up for iPhone 6+. You only need large XxY images if you expect to use large images. Again I would go for x2 resolution for those. Often worth having an iPhone and iPad version of an image in case your expect usage on iPad is to use a bigger XxY point size.
As noted in the link, the impact of scaling depends on the image. I would only worry about the images you think look bad when scaled. So far I have not found scaling to be an issue and much easier than creating lots of bespoke PNGs.
Scale it down before set it:
Swift extension:
extension UIImage{
// returns a scaled version of the image
func imageScaledToSize(size : CGSize, isOpaque : Bool) -> UIImage{
// begin a context of the desired size
UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(size, isOpaque, 0.0)
// draw image in the rect with zero origin and size of the context
let imageRect = CGRect(origin: CGPointZero, size: size)
self.drawInRect(imageRect)
// get the scaled image, close the context and return the image
let scaledImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext()
UIGraphicsEndImageContext()
return scaledImage
}
}
Example:
aUIImageView.image = aUIImage.imageScaledToSize(aUIImageView.bounds.size, isOpaque : false)
Set isOpaque to true if the image has no alpha: drawing will have better performance.