With the new iPad and its Retina Display, iOS apps are getting even larger due to the various sizes of assets. When a user downloads your app from the store, you want them to get it quickly. You especially don't want them to be forced to download from wifi if you can help it. Fortunately, a new app called PaintCode has been released just in time by PixelCut to help remedy this problem.
Summary
PaintCode is a vector image editor. What makes it special is that PaintCode generates Core Graphics code for both Mac OS X and iOS. The idea is that we can draw many of our graphics rather than include a series of rasters in the app's main bundle. PaintCode also serves as a bridge between graphics artists and developers. The graphics artist can generate the assets using PaintCode, then the developer can take the generated code and tweak it as needed.
Test Run
To really see if PaintCode could fill my needs, I stress tested it with a fairly complicated image: the Siri button. The Siri button touches nearly every feature of PaintCode, including arbitrary shapes, linear/radial gradients, and inside/outside shadows.
Within a few hours, I had all the intricate details worked out. I consider myself an amateur graphics artist, but PaintCode made the process very easy. Most of the controls are intuitive and easy to learn. The provided examples and videos also helped.
I then put the code to the test. I simply dropped the code into a custom UIView. To make things more interesting, I applied some affine transformations.
I found that the transformations worked perfectly with everything except, inside shadows. The inside shadows will translate properly, but won't rotate or scale properly. I am not entirely sure why they don't work. I expect this bug will be fixed in a future release.
Pros
Again, PaintCode made generating vector assets very easy. I tried out the trial of a competing app, Opacity, but I found PaintCode to be much more intuitive. I also appreciate the great attention to aesthetic detail, yet minimalistic style.
Everything in PaintCode is drawn using Core Graphics. So, whatever you see on the canvas is exactly what will appear in your own app.
The generated code may not be perfect, but it's pretty good. The advantage of PaintCode is it does the hard, tedious work. Once the image is finished, a developer can easily tweak details as needed to make the drawing more dynamic.
Cons
Though PaintCode generates some good Core Graphics code, it is not truly resolution independent. You will notice this particularly with the radial gradient on the button. I wanted to alternate colors about once every pixel or two. PaintCode only allowed 21 discrete steps for a gradient. Furthermore, since the number of steps is fixed, changing the scale changes the appearance. Fortunately, this can be remedied by tweaking the generated code. A simple for loop can dynamically change the number of steps as the scale changes.
As any graphics artist knows, vector images are not a silver bullet. There are some relationships that are not 1:1 linear transformations. For example, one object may scale twice as fast as another. The scale could even be x2. This scaling problem can be fixed in code though. Also, when the size changes, details often need to be added or removed. The code could be modified to do this automatically as the scale changes, but this is probably outside the scope of PaintCode and may be more trouble than it is worth.
My Wishlist
If there is anything I could have added to this app, it would be import SVG. Every graphics artist has his or her favorite vector editor. It would be amazing if PaintCode could import an SVG file (or AI file) and convert it to Core Graphics code. I have no doubt such a feature would be a large undertaking, but if PaintCode could do this, it would be worth so much more than $80.
Recommendation
If you have an app that is getting large, you should really look into getting PaintCode and converting some of your assets to Core Graphics. Or if you are trying to draw something in Core Graphics and find debugging too hard, PaintCode will make save you many hours.
Code
If you want a copy of my PaintCode file or Xcode project, you can find them on my GitHub account.
Disclaimer
I received a copy of PaintCode free for the purposes of reviewing. However, I do not receive any compensation if you purchase PaintCode.
