I've made an "magic" app with a lot of coins/playing-cards.
Therefore I have a lot of images of coins, dollar bills, playing cards etc. (regular + retina resolution)
This results in a relative big file size of the final app, which I would like to avoid; since it can't be downloaded without a wifi-connection.
Currently it's 48.6 mb when downloading it from the App Store.
The images (100+) is all .png's saved in two versions, for the regular and retina displays.
Is there anyway to optimize this and reducing the final file size of my app?
I've considdered only storing the big (#2x) .png's and the scaling them accordingly.
I have had a lot of success using ImageOptim to compress the size of images in my application.
Also, if your images are png-24, you can reduce them png-8 and save a lot of space as well. png-8 doesn't support transparency though.
Why save 2 sizes? Do you have to display so many at a time that loading the retina version takes up too much memory on a 3G? Personally I don't think you should still think of supporting such an old device. Apple also dropped support for it a while ago and it really is lacking the memory for some decent applications.
Also, have you tried using some tools to compress your images without the users noticing it? like photoshop "save for web & devices", or yahoo's services etc.
why do you need to store TWO versions of images? Just use hires imges in regular displays. Or, if you whant so, you can distribute 2 apps...
Are you shure, that your images has necessary sizes? i mean retina display has 680x920 pixels. if you are don't zooming images, you don'n need to make them bigger. And in this case, mb *.app file, in archive... there must be 1000 images...
Related
I have 2 iOS apps that have been in the market, 3 years on iPhone, 2 years on iPad HD version. The apps are a popular reference tool in the medical field. They are both comprised of 1100+ images. The current app size is roughly 52mb.
Approximately 400 images will be redone. They are currently jpg and low resolution. The replacements will be png, with higher resolution.
I'm uncertain on pixel size for these images. If they are in the 280x280 range, each file is about 100k, if in the 560x560 range, each file is almost 400k.
So I'd be looking at additional 40mb for the smaller images and 160mb for the larger.
There are plans for another 400+ images in the near future. So, I'm somewhat concerned with final app size.
If I went with the larger size for Retina devices, can I downsize for non-Retina devices?
If I supplied both sizes, image.png and image#2x.png, that would be 200mb just for these images.
I'm a little uncertain on how to manage these with regards to their individual size and, more importantly, their total size.
Any comments or suggestions are welcomed and would be helpful.
TIA,
jb
Here are a few options you have:
1. Downsizing Retina Images
I would not recommended downsizing retina images for the non-retina devices. This produces non-optimal performance and makes the images look bad. Your still loading in all the pixels of a retina image, but only displaying 1/4 of them.
2. Bundling All of the Images
Honestly for a medical reference app, I think it would be understandable if your app size would be quite large. I wouldn't imagine people would need to download this app over 3G or LTE. Your users understand this is a large database app which provides high resolution images, thus they should be okay with the large app size via this method.
3. Hosting the Images on a Web Service
Another alternative would be to host the images on a server, allowing them to be downloaded individually as needed, or in bundles. I think your users would prefer being able to fully use the app without internet connection rather than having a smaller app size.
4. Alternative Image Loading
This approach takes a bit of work and could be a little risky. You could bundle only 2x versions of your images into the app. Then on App launch you could force the user to wait until you resize all the images to their 1x counterparts and save them off to the disk. Then you could create an image loading convenience method which loads a UIImage from either disk or the app bundle based on whether or not it needs a retina image.
I definitely recommend option 2 for your purposes. I only mentioned the others to be thorough.
What would be the best advice if I have my app built with SD images but I want it to look decent on iphone devices that support HD?
I've heard that simply doubling the size of all my images to get HD versions using Photoshop doesn't look good?
If I just don't support HD at all (turn retina display off in cocos2d) will it look blurred?
There are two types of source images: the raw graphics files you used to create your images, such as a Photoshop or Illustrator file, and then the actual images you exported from those programs to include in your app.
For example, you might take a 10 megapixel photo with a digital camera, but you size it down to include it in your app.
You do not want to increase the size/resolution of the pictures you exported for the app, because they do not have the graphic information to fill a higher image. It's like take a cup of water and expecting it to fill a bucket. The information is simply not there and it will look bad.
However, if you go back to your original graphics files, such as the 10 megapixel image in my example, you can create a new set of exported graphics for the higher resolution. You always start with your raw source files and then go down from there. Never start with files already exported for a certain resolution and then try to go up from there, or you will have pixelated poor graphics as the result.
Saving pictures for use in iPhone and Android applications is a real bore.
Having to make 2 separate versions for iPhone is tedious enough and then creating 3/4 versions for android (or more) is just as difficult.
Is there no way to make one set of pictures in photoshop and have them save in the various formats and sizes for iphone and android?
For instance creating them at the highest resolution necessary and it does all the resizing and such automatically (as if you were to change the image size).
Or am I really going to have to refactor each and every image in my apps?!
Thanks
Tom
I think Adobe Device Central and actions/macros in Photoshop may help you to solve your task.
Our graphics guy just gave me the sliced images for an Application we're building, but he only gave me the resolution for the 960x640 iPhone 4 res.
And advised that I can just scale the images down for 3g at runtime, so the resolution/image size remains the same but it's just displayed at half size.
The question: Is this allowed when submitting to the app store, or is it a requirement to have for example:
IMAGE1#2x.PNG (460x640) - iPhone 4
IMAGE1.PNG (230x320) - iPhone 3g
For all images.
I might just do the batch conversion and have two resolutions for all images, to save maximum space.
That's allowed, but obviously the images will occupy four times as much RAM on the older devices than they otherwise would, having four times the pixels. While the iPhone 4 has 512mb of RAM, the 3G and the original have just 128mb. Though assuming you are dealing with memory warnings correctly and everything will still fit, the main side effect will be performance issues whenever things are purged and later reloaded from disk (which, as I'm sure you're aware, is handled automatically for view controllers in NIBs). Based on empirical observations, the flash memory on pre-3GS devices is a lot slower than the later stuff so even if you're sticking with the large images it would make sense to attempt to minimise on-disk size.
Best practice that has worked for me is to make my retina image, then scale it down by 50%.
In order for the retina display to use the larger image, the #2x MUST be apart of the larger image. Your example is the way it should be used.
I would do the batch scaling ahead of time for sure. If for no other reason than the iPhone chooses whether or not to display the IMAGE1.PNG or the IMAGE1#2X.PNG depending on the resolution of the screen. In your code you always just reference IMAGE1.PNG. You don't have to make any coding changes. If you scale them at runtime you will have to override all of your calls to any UIImage type of thing.
IMHO, You are likely to miss one or else Apple is likely to release a different configuration of phone that will cause you to have to rework all of your code that is checking for screen resolution.
So I'm building an app for 4.x devices and I'm wondering if I can just use one set of assets at double resolution instead of one set with a #2x id and another set without.
Basically im asking can the older 3g and 3gs just use the #2x assets? and do the right thing with them?
anyone have experience with this?
Thanks
You're better off using two sets of resources, one for the high resolution retina displays and one for the older displays. Downsizing #2x graphics won't look pretty and will impact performance, especially on 2G iPod Touches.
The older devices can use the #2x but as far as I understand you'll need to:
Set your UIImageViews to scale the images to fit.
Hardcode image references to the new images.
Expect poor image quality and slower performance on non-retina devices.
Overall, it's better to provide two copies of the images, "bob.png" and "bob#2x.png" then reference them in code as "bob.png".
NB. As of iOS4 you can reference the images without their file endings, so just "bob" would work; however this has compatibility implications with devices running pre-iOS4 : the images won't be found. So for maximum compatibility include the file endings if you intend on deploying to both iOS4 and iOS3.x.
They technically can, given you make sure they're scaling the right way (e.g. if it's an image view that it's set to scale up/down).
However it's not recommended in most situations, mainly because it'll be slower, uses more resources, and leads to shorter battery life. Also, depends on your resources but an artwork scaled down by a factor of 2 doesn't have the same quality as one that is resampled specifically for the new size.