Creating images for android - android

I'm currently creating an app for android that's going to need multiple images. Backgrounds, an image for the icon, and images for the buttons that I'll have. What's the best way to create an image for an android application and how would you implement them into the app so that they work? Any suggestion would be helpful. Thanks!

As a non-artist developer, creating production-quality images can be hard and probably best jobbed out to a graphics person. Partnering with a graphics/sound person can be a good solution.
For early development or other stuff that doesn't need to be production quality, I start with GIMP. Then for icons and buttons that need to be scalable, I use the free site Android Asset Studio to create 9-patch images.

Related

What is a good way for a designer to create a 9-Patch Image for me -- Without knowledge of 9-Patch

I am on a small mobile application development team and we have decided that we are going to use a 9-Patch Image for android Splash Screens.
For iOS this easy - the designer is going to use this template --http://davidlillo.com/ios-splash-screen-template-psd/
In photoshop, the designer can easily create the iOS splash screen, generate all the sizes and hand it off to me - The Developer.
How can I adopt a workflow similar to this one for creating 9-Patch Splash Screens for android? I would like my designers to use a template like this, but I cannot find one that will do a 9Patch.
I have looked into many online tools that generate 9-Patch, but we don't want to rely on somebody else's web service or upload our proprietary images to who-knows-where in the cloud.
The problem with Draw 9-Patch command line tool, and other tools on GitHub is that these tools are for Developers. I don't want a designer to have install anything on their computer to generate image sizes.
Ideally we would like to create a Splash Screen image one time in Photoshop and generate all of the sizes for iOS (we have this already) along with a 9-Patch image for all of the android sizes.
Does a solution like this exist out there? It would be a nice if there was a Photoshop Template that we could use where we would make the image one time generate all the sizes for both android and iOS. If not, can someone please describe a workflow they use where the designer is responsible for creating the 9-Patch image? Thanks.
There's a very nice tool out there for quick 9 path generation on this link:
Simple Nine-patch Generator

Which is a better option on mobiles.. sprites or individual image files for an app

This is mainly a question for someone who has adequate experience with mobile development in both android and ios, and knows about mobile application optimizations and performance, so please refrain from answering generic solutions like "choose what you like or what suits your preference etc".
So, I am developing a mobile app for ios and android in phonegap, and it has graphics for almost all possible social medias like facebook, twitter, snapchat. My questions is whether I should maintain the icons/graphics for each media as individual files, or as a combined sprite image.
I understand on web sprites are the best options, but since these graphics are embedded in the app, it should not be a problem for the mobile app. Only thing I am concerned about is how the number of embedded images and icons in the app will affect the performance of the app.
I prefer to keep each social media icon in separate file because it is used at various places in the app with different styles and sizes, so using a sprite in that place would mean taking care of background size, image width all individually, whereas with the individual icons it is very straight forward. Also makes it easy to add/change medias to the app without modifying existing graphics.
So if someone can please tell me what effect will it have on keeping individual icons and graphics within the phonegap app instead of sprites and whether it is the better option or not!
i have worked with a android for over two years and i have realized that pngs are the best format to work with in android application and for JPEGs the best practise is to use a hyphen to name the JPEGs eg image_one.jpeg
Using png's will be the best format as they have never failed.I would gladly help if u need more assistance

How do I go about implementing Android UI, specifically this gallery?

This question has 2 parts:
1) I'm new to Android development and find implementing the UI on Android quite overwhelming. It would be great help if you could point me to some free UI libraries or give me some advice on how mobile developers go about implementing the UI. Is there some framework of "standard" UI framework which I can use to build simple stuff that aren't directly possible from the Android API? I want to focus more on the content of the app rather than building all the quite common design patterns from scratch.
2) Currently, I'm building an app, which needs to have a gallery. I'm thinking of this
I want to supply a Vector of Photo (which contains URL to the thumbnail and the actual sized image) to this View and get something like that.
Thanks
That app is simply displaying the photos in a gridview. There are many libraries out there but Nostro's Universal Image Loader supports adding images from urls into gridview. Universal Image Loader

Android Live Wallpaper

I'm making a live wallpaper app and I was just wondering if I can create a background in photoshop and then place animations on top of that. I'm new to this and all the examples I've seen online don't really mention anything about this. Any help would be much appreciated!
I suggest using AndEngine for android. it has an addon specifically made for creating live wallpapers. you can also find some examples of usage in the andEngine examples.
Now a layered structure is pretty common and definitely should and can be used. So stacking photos isn't an issue but you really need to be careful about their sizes because you can quickly run out of memory.
Create the background in photoshop
Save it as png
Create a square in opengl
Texture the square using your background png
square should fit the screen in order to look like a background
Then create the animation or whatever in front of the background

Where do people make their backgrounds?

I am building an application and currently am in the process of add backgrounds in. The way I make the backgrounds are by designing it in Microsoft Word and then pasting it into Paint then saving it as a .png file. This way works but it does not give a clear and crisp picture on phones. I'm wanting to know what do you guys use when putting backgrounds in on your applications. (ie. Photoshop)
Yes Photoshop is better option, but now a days you can make them online if you are not familiar with Photoshop, easily.
Check the following...
wallcreater
bg patterns
x3studios
click this to googled results
Photoshop or GIMP would be my first suggestions

Categories

Resources