How to reduce Android app size by compressing images? - android

I am developing an Android app which has hundreds of .jpg files (over 300) each one of around 40kB. I would like to know if there is a way of reducing the size of my app. I looked at a similar question here Reducing Android App Size, but the problem still exists. Is there perhaps a way to compress the images and decompress them in real time when needed, or any other way to make my app more space efficient while not sacrificing speed?

If you have used tinypng for every resource you did your best with this kind of solution. In general, it's better to use vector graphics where the general icon will be <1kb. Also, a vector resource can be animated. If it's quite simply bitmaps, you can generate them in code on demand. Also, you can divide your app by dynamic features and each will be downloaded on demand with their part of the resources.
Is there perhaps a way to compress the images and decompress them in real-time when needed?
There is no standard Android solution out of the box. Probably, you can write something on your own. But this looks like too much effort.
Still, the most practical solution: use vector graphics as max as possible, generate in code what you can generate, compress with tinypng the others. That should be enough or you should have a very good reason for making some extra work.
For more info about vector graphics in android. For standard vector graphic import right in the android studio.
Web-site where you can download icons and insert them into the project.

Related

Multiple images in Android app

Let's say I have 100 PNG files (images) I want to use in my Android app. If I add them all in the drawable folder, would that be a performance impediment? If yes, what alternatives do I have?
I mention that I won't use them all at the same time. Most probably, I will need 6 of them at any given time.
Only storing them in a folder would not be a performance impediment.
As long as you do not load the images in your code, performances are not involved.
Then it's up to your use to choose to load them all at the start of your app, or on demand when your app is running.
It shouldn't impede the performance of your app in any way, however you may want to consider clever ways of compressing the images to reduce APK size or the times to load individual images i.e vector drawables or webp.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_LpCi6DQME

Is there any recommended number of files/Images to be stored within Android project?

What is the correct way to store files within Android Project?
All files in local folders? All in webserver? 50/50 ?
The reason I am asking is because my project's size has been increasing a lot due to the number of drawables and I am afraid I should do something about it.
Can this compromise the app performance?
The large app size i.e. apk file size might not compromise your app performance but, will certainly make it slower to install your app. From the user's perspective, if two apps provide same features and have similar performance the size of their apk files will be the deciding factor for them to install your app.
Using web server to save drawables can be an efficient way if your app is a web based app. In case, your app does not require web access or internet access for any other purpose, don't save drawables on the web server.
However, I would suggest you to reduce the size of your drawable files in such a way that their quality is not effected. All this can be achieved by help of tools like Photoshop (I have personally not tried this but know that it is possible).
You can also use nine-patch drawables. These drawable files can stretch themselves along the sides specified without compromising the image's quality. For more info on the same visit following links:
http://developer.android.com/tools/help/draw9patch.html
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/drawable/NinePatchDrawable.html
Also, make sure that your icons are of specifications as specified in the Material Design Guidelines. Visit the link for more details: https://www.google.com/design/spec/style/icons.html#

Handling lots of drawables in android project

I am beginner in Android development. I need to show 400+ images in my android app. Right now I am putting all of them in my drawable folder, but this doesn't seem good, as my apk becomes too large in size. What should I do? Can I play with images' resolution and all? Please help.
best solution will be to put them in web and then displaying it through lazy list, But if thats not an option then only thing you can do is to compress your image to a extent it is acceptable, that will check you problem of large apk size.
try PNGOUT , a great tool for compressing images.
Put them all in a extension-obb-File:
http://developer.android.com/google/play/expansion-files.html
So I handled it with videos.

Android efficient storage of two images which are similar

Application size on a phone needs to be as small as possible. If I have an image of a sword and then a very similar image of that same sword except that I've changed the color or added flames or changed the picture of the jewel or whatever, how do store things as efficiently as possible?
One possibility is to store the differences graphically. I'd store just the image differences and then combine the two images at runtime. I've already asked a question on the graphic design stackexchange site about how to do that.
Another possibility would be that there is that apk already does this or that there is already a file format or method people use to store similar images in android.
Any suggestions? Are there tools that I could use to take two pngs and generate a difference file or a file format for storing similar images or something?
I'd solve this problem at a higher level. For example, do the color change at run-time (maybe store the image with a very specific color like some ugly shade of green that you know is the color to be fixed at run-time with white or red or blue or whatever actual color you want). Then you could generate several image buffers at load-time.
For compositing the two images, just store the 'jewel' image separately, and draw it over the basic sword. Again, you could create a new image at load-time, or just do the overdraw at run-time.
This will help reduce your application's footprint on flash, but will not reduce the memory footprint when the app is active.
I believe your idea of storing the delta between 2 images to be quite good.
You would then compress the resulting delta file with a simple entropy coder, such as Huffman, and you are pretty likely to achieve a strong compression ratio if similarities with base image are important.
If the similarity are really very strong, you could even try a Range Coder, to achieve less-than-one-bit-per-pixel performance. The difference however might be noticeable only for larger images (i.e higher definition than a 12x12 sprite).
These ideas however will require you or someone to write for you such function's code. This should be quite straightforward.
An very easy approach to do this is to use an ImagePack ( one image containing many ) - so you can easy leverage the PNG or JPG compression algorithms for your purpose. You then split the images before drawing.

Smaller APK size with large assets?

I am creating a simple android app to view a comic book. The pages are large(0.5-1 mb each), high quality .png's and I am loading them into a webview to make use of the built in zoom controls. So far I only have 17 files and the APK size is already about 16 mb. I'm looking to add over 200 files in future updates. I can't really reduce the quality too much because there is small text that must be zoomed-in on to read. Any suggestions? A similar question was posted here: How to reduce App (.apk) Size, but I don't want to lose the quality of the images. I'm not sure if it's appropriate to link to here, but you can have a look at my app by searching for Tracer (by Detour Mobile) on the android market if it helps at all. Thanks in advance.
You could compress them without using lossy compression- e.g. zipping/rarring them, but I don't believe this would gain you much more than a few kilobytes here and there. Otherwise, try using a more compact format than PNG, such as JPEG (you won't lose too much quality.) By the way, all of this was suggested in the referenced post.
If you do decide to scale down the images' size somewhat, be sure to use a method like bicubic sharper- it tends to look better than others when reducing image size.
Another option would be to download the images for the comic that is being read on-the-fly with pre-fetching so reading would not be interrupted as much.
Consider placing your images in Assets folder as opposed to Res. The big difference is, Assets content won't be compiled into R.java class so you will see major storage savings. You'd have to modify your code though as you won't be able to call up the images via the regular r.resID notation, but it's doable
android offers a new way to deal with it.
android app bundle apk size has a maximum size of 150mb
but you can use an asset pack to seperate the apk from the static files
and upload your app
here is a more detailed explanation about asset packs:
https://developer.android.com/guide/playcore/asset-delivery
here is the guide for integrating asset packs with regular android app:
https://developer.android.com/guide/playcore/asset-delivery/integrate-java

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