I know this question might be considered better on Stack UI, but I wanted some opinions from fellow app developers.
I've designed my app with black opaque navigation bars, and dark colored backgrounds. I've produced some radial gradient backgrounds in my paint program. I have three different images (plus a second set for retina). One has a dark green to black gradient, another dark yellow to black and a dark blue to black gradient.
So my app looks quite dark.
I didn't think this was a problem.
However me colleague thinks this is a very bad idea, that it will make people think their money will disappear into a black hole.
I'd like to use different colors backgrounds as I have one view I use in edit and add mode, to differentiate them. Also it makes each screen more distinctive.
I've also had a look round to see if you can buy sets of backgrounds, but I've only seen wallpaper sites for users to use.
I want to make my app seem cool, thats why I've gone for a dark scheme. But I'm now a little worried that it will affect sales.
I'd like some opinions please. I don't really want to post any of my screens as I haven't released my app / idea yet.
See http://www.noupe.com/showcases/showcase-well-designed-banking-and-investment-websites.html
IMO, Go with light Grey
#eee
Also see http://www.mybanktracker.com/
I would agree that a dark scheme probably isn't the best but have you looked at other apps? Mint uses a nice contrast of dark headers with white (or light) content areas. They even have a nice textured background if you drill to the transaction view. I'm using a very light green in an app I'm working on that could go really well with dark nav bars and a dark green-ish/black font. It could at least be a nice background color bumping up against dark borders.
[UIColor colorWithRed:196/255.0 green:218/255.0 blue:173/255.0 alpha:1.0]
However, I will say that it's difficult to recommend a color scheme without seeing what kind of ui you're dealing with (how many elements and of what type, etc).
good luck...
I think using the banks colours is best for brand recognition, the National Bank iBank app does this well.
Related
am designing a html email template that supports dark mode for all email clients but am facing a problem with the logo.
The logo is a black .png image and the default/light background is white, so in dark mode it becomes black over black. Adding an outline to the logo is not an option, using 2 images with classes and controlling which one to display using media queries won't work for Gmail ios and some outlook versions, so am left with three choices but am not sure wither they are applicable and supported by all famous clients:
forcing the white background by using a gradient as the background-color value instead of a hex value
using this method that I found online for webpages:
<picture>
<source srcset="dark-mode.png" media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)">
<img src="light-image.png">
</picture>
using an SVG instead of the image so the fill color will change.
So, are any of them is applicable and supported?
Also, more suggestions/ideas/options are appreciated.
Support for SVG is quite limited so unfortunately that's not an option: https://www.caniemail.com/features/image-svg/
#media prefers-color-scheme: dark is not supported on Gmail/some Outlooks, so that's not going to work. https://www.caniemail.com/features/css-at-media-prefers-color-scheme/
Using a gradient to force unchanging background is not ideal (we should be supporting customer's preferences), and also not 100% cross-compatible. (background-image: linear-gradient(#ffffff,#ffffff);)
If a 1px white stroke is no good for you, you could try a soft glow like Litmus do.
Alternatively, sometimes we just end up putting a single-colour background in the image itself (i.e. getting rid of the transparency), perhaps with rounded corners (a tiny bit of transparency on the corners). Works best for icons, but might be your only option.
I have tried to read AVFoundation documentation and I can't find anything about colors. Is it possible to change the color to red, green or blue? I think I have seen colored torch apps.
Would it be very hard to write your own code that controlled color hue or lumen of the flashlight?
While there are apps that get around this by display a brightly colored screen, the flash on the iPhone is has a single LED element.
You do, via AVCaptureDevice, have the ability to change the intensity of torches on some models. Take a look at the torchLevel property.
You could always try an easy hardware hack.
At left there's the original image (after imported in Xcode), at right the image inside UIImageView. It's more dark.
Why this? It's a very annoying problem.
Man! Its just an illusion.
Don't ask "magic" related questions here. Ask only program related questions ;-)
Both images are of same color. They look different because their background colors are different. Use Photoshop or some other tool to find the colors of those two. They should be the same.
Its because the background colours are different and the stroke on the image is the same / similar colour to the background.
Change the background colour of the view to white, and it will look normal.
I often get given mockup images that define how an iPhone app is supposed to look. These can come from as many different methods as there are projects, sometimes balsamiq or even hand-drawn, sometimes Photoshop. One thing that is common is a bar tint color specified usually to match some corporate branding or overall app design.
If I open one of these design images in an app and use the paint dropper tool to get the RGB value for a color there are many places to do it, from the darkest regions at the lower edge of included buttons to the lightest regions at the top of the bar. I can't find a place to sample the color where the programmed result matches the mockups, it is always wrong in some regard leading to me squinting at two images trying to tweak one or more color values so they match well enough.
Given an sample of how a client imagines a navigation bar should appear*, how do you determine the right UIColor to apply to a bar's tintColor attribute?
*ignoring mockups containing rainbow effects, misapplied gradients and other flights of fancy. Matching color and brightness along the centre line would be good enough. That's at least a defensible position - "What you ask for just isn't how iOS works!"
Set up an app with a UINavigationBar/UIToolbar and three sliders to set the tintColor. Move the sliders around until it looks right.
If you also bring the image into the app somehow (UIPasteboard or stick it in a resource), using -[CALayer renderInContext:] and some CoreGraphics magic (kCGBlendModeDifference and something to multiply the differences; I forget what I used) you can even compare the two images.
Simulator note: You will first need to do Cmd-C to "paste" from the Mac pasteboard into the simulator pasteboard.
What I found was that you can't reproduce the default gradient on both the iPhone and iPad except with a tintColor = nil (the iPad default also has no "shine"). You can get reasonably close, but then the Done button colour is all wrong.
Usually I sample in the middle of the mock-up nav bar.
Excellent question which I don't have a direct answer for, but do have a solution.
Usually when I get designs the navigation bar doesn't really look like the iPhone's nav bar with a tint. The gradient is usually different as well. The way I see it, there are two ways to go:
Get the app sort of like the design
Get the app exactly like the design
Most of the times I get it almost like the design, which usually means sampling the color used in the mockup and using it as a tint color (or maybe a slightly lighter version of it).
If I really want to get it exactly right the way is to replace the default nav bar drawing with an image.
Just create a category for UINavigationBar and override drawRect. This works surprisingly well and most times the default buttons will be the color you need and blend right in without extra work.
In any case in my experience getting your app to look exactly like the designer's work is a lot of work that's usually overlooked. But when done properly it's totally worth it.
In the example below I needed to support two different nav bar looks for two different sections of the app, so I used the view's tag property to check which version to use.
#implementation UINavigationBar (CustomImage)
- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect {
UIImage *image=nil;
if (self.tag == 0)
image = [UIImage imageNamed: #"navBarDesign1.png"];
else if (self.tag == 1)
image = [UIImage imageNamed: #"navBarDesign2.png"];
[image drawInRect:CGRectMake(0, 0, self.frame.size.width, self.frame.size.height)];
}
#end
Elaborating on tc.'s answer, here's a free app in the AppStore I found for doing just this, called "BarTint"
http://www.appstore.com/bartint
I always put the style to "Black Opaque" (if I work with Interface Builder) and then sample the darkest color in the design (usually regions at the lower edge) and put that color as tint. This gives me something really similar, BUT of course doesn't allow me to control the light (reflection) side. If the client really wants the exact gradient, I use a image (unfortunately)...
If I use a png file with transparent background as the app icon in iOS4, the compiler will change its background to black. How can I preserve its transparency?
Transparent application icons are not allowed. The iOS Human Interface Guidelines makes it clear that alpha transparency is not allowed and elaborates:
Give your application icon a discernible background. Icons with visible backgrounds look best on the Home screen primarily because of the rounded corners iOS adds. This is because uniformly rounded corners ensure that all the icons on a user's Home screen have a consistent appearance that invites tapping. If you create an icon with a background that disappears when it's viewed on the Home screen, users don't see the rounded corners. Such icons often don't look tappable and tend to interfere with the orderly symmetry of the Home screen that users appreciate.
Be sure your image completely fills the required area. If your image boundaries are smaller than the recommended sizes, or you use transparency to create “see-through” areas within them, your icon can appear to float on a black background with rounded corners.
I think it is impossible.
Did you specify
UIPrerenderedIcon YES
in your plist file? The standard effects would make the transparency useless...
I think transparent icons are discouraged, and I think you might have a hard time making it through the review (that is, if it is technically possible at all).
It is possible, but background will be filled by black color. And your app may be rejected by censors of App Store.