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G
gtr
Inspiring
April 19, 2012
Question

iOS: Thoughts on scaling down Retina content for iPad 2?

  • April 19, 2012
  • 2 replies
  • 1249 views

I don't have a non-Retina device to test on (yet. Still early in development on my universal first app), so I was wondering if anyone else is considering scaling Retina content down 50% for non-Retina devices? (iPod Touch 3rd Gen, iPhone 3GS & iPad 2) This method would sure be nicer than having to package a bunch of extra images!

Testing for appearance in Flash CS 5.5, this scaling method seems to work fine, with the exception of small text; (button labels) doesn't look that great. Anybody have some insight or experience with scaling text on these screens? Will it look better on the actual device or should I import native resolution non-Retina elements for the smaller text?

Thanks for helping an iOS noob!

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

G
gtrAuthor
Inspiring
April 19, 2012

Update since I played with this some more today...

I decided to create new tab/nav bar with buttons at standard (non-Retina display) resolution and call that in for non-Retina devices, while scaling down my app pages 50%. (Larger text seems to look fine when scaled down) I dropped the font on my button labels from Helvetica Neue "medium" to "regular" as well as checking "use device fonts." Both actions seemed to bring a marked improvement on legibility for the small font size (11). Hopefully this will all check out when I get to test it on a real non-Retina device, but I do hear Apple's hardware does a pretty good job at scaling.

Hope this helps someone...

A
Applauz78
Inspiring
April 19, 2012

gtr,

I'm working on an iPad app right now that I built only using retina ready graphics.

What I did is use a stage size of 1024 x 768. 

Just size all graphics down by 50% and make sure smoothing is turned on.

I find that JPG's dont work well.  

As for fonts...  as long as you embed the fonts .. they look great.

Colin Holgate
Colin Holgate
Inspiring
April 19, 2012

It shouldn't matter whether the image was JPEG or PNG, it's whether smoothing is selected in the library info.

Bitmap text can look a bit crunchy when scaled down. In some cases I have had an alternate image that shows if the screen is a small one.

G
gtrAuthor
Inspiring
April 19, 2012

Thanks guys,

What about replacing bitmap text with static text fields using device fonts? Would that make much of a difference when scaled down?

@ Colin. Yes, my next test was to import a native resolution, non-Retina tab bar and keep everything else as-is (scaled down versions of Retina content).

My goal is not to skimp too much on the non-Retina device quality; there are a lot of iPad 2's in the field, and if the iPad "Mini" rumors hold true, it looks like we'll having to deal with non-Retina support for a long while...

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