iPhone icon generator
Tab bar Icons
Today I spent several hours pixel twiddling UITabBar icons. The iPhone UITabBar class requires icons to be in an unusual format, initially created for the Safari browser. Blogs were replete with recommendations. Use Gimp! No, use Photoshop and mess with channels! Image matte, alpha transparency, JPG, PNG, grayscale, etc. etc.
My head hurt.
I finally came across some neat utilities from my old friend ImageMagick. After some experimenting I created a script that would convert any image into a 32×32 icon. I was so happy when it finally worked! I kept getting square blobs, regardless of what I tried (gradients, multiple colors, image masks).
The script is now available. I call it Tabulicious. The page uploads an image, converts it to the iPhone format, and stores both in Amazon S3 for immediate download. Here are some hints:
- Use images with a clean background, preferably white
- The main character of your image should have darker outlines, and lighter colors inside.
- Vector art works better than photographs.
Hi,
Your tool works very well and has been a great help, but I am finding 32×32 icons a little crowded on my tabbar controler on my app. Can you help me create 30×30 or specify the output size to the process?
-jaz
Good idea! I’ll add a little selector for target size.