Create Every iOS Icon For Your App With a Photoshop Script

Posted on September 17, 2012, under Blog, iDevBlogADay, Tips 13 Comments

When you create any kind of app that will go on Apple’s App Store, they require you to have an icon for your app. Well because of the number of different devices and resolutions out there, you’ll need multiple copies of this icon before submission. This script can do that for you in a few seconds!

What Are the Icons For?

Here is a chart that explains the current icons:

File NameSizeDevice(s)PurposeIcon.png57 x 57iPhone/iPod TouchHome Screen App [e-mail]114 x 114iPhone/iPod Touch
(Retina)Home Screen App IconIcon-72.png72 x 72iPadHome Screen App [e-mail]144 x 144iPad (Retina)Home Screen App IconIcon-Small.png29 x 29iPhone/iPod Touch, iPadSpotlight Search Results
and Settings
(Settings for iPad)[e-mail]58 x 58iPhone/iPod Touch, iPad
(Retina)Spotlight Search Results
and Settings
(Settings for iPad)Icon-Small-50.png50 x 50iPadSpotlight Search [e-mail]100 x 100iPad (Retina)Spotlight Search ResultsItunesArtwork
(no extension)512 x 512iPhone/iPod Touch/iPadApp StoreItunesArtwork@2x
(no extension)1024 x 1024iPhone/iPod Touch/iPadApp Store (Retina)

Requirements

In order to do this you’re going to need:

• Photoshop
• A square PNG image 1024×1024 or greater
• The script itself which can be downloaded from here.

Usage

The script itself it just a text file with a funky extension that Adobe products understand. To use this in Photoshop you’re going to want to place it in the Photoshop scripts directory.

On Mac that’s usually located: Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS6/Presets/Scripts (Or whatever your version of Photoshop is)

On Windows that’s usually located at: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS6 (64 Bit)\Presets\Scripts

One you place the file here, load up Photoshop and look under “File -> Scripts” and you should see “Create iOS Icons”

Here is a video showing how it works in action:

Final Notes

The original script was created by Matt Di Pasquale who shared it on GitHub 2 years ago. I added some extra checks, a couple missing icons, and the ability to output to a file.

If you find this script useful, please let me know! Feel free to “fork” it, as they say in GitHub land. I’m sure this could also be automated to be part of the Xcode build process as well, but I’ll leave that as a project for another day.