Does apple apply the app icon gloss effect and corner rounding on every icon?

Question

The iTunes Connect Developer Guide says that the developer must provide a whole bunch of different icon sizes. But I only know from the "normal" app icons (57x57, 114x114) that the device applies the gloss effect and corner rounding automatically.

But how about those other icons? How about the 512x512 iTunesArtwork.png icon? Are the effects applied automatically? Must this icon be shipped inside the bundle of the app? Is there any way to see it "live" how it finally looks, when those effects are applied?

I slightly remember that there was a tool from apple that applied those effects to an icon, so you could see them. Does anyone know more details about this?

Answer 1

The glow and rounded corners are applied automatically. You can control the glow, by adding a key to your Info.plist file: UIPrerenderedIcon set to YES will indicate that your icon is "prerendered" and you don't want the glow.

The AppStore will honor that setting for the 512x512 icon as well.

Answer 2

You actually should supply 6 icons now. One for the iPhone4, iPad, normal iphones/ipod touch, and 2 smaller icons for spotlight search (one is double resolution).

I wrote a pretty cool photoshop script to take you 512px icon and convert it using photoshop into 6 smaller sizes all named correctly.

http://github.com/sponno/iPhone-Photoshop-JSX-Icon-Exporter

You will also see in the header of the file, now to update your info.plist to include all these icons.

Answer 3

For more details on those six icons and their required sizes, here's two great resources:

• http://mrgan.tumblr.com/post/708404794/ios-app-icon-sizes
• http://blog.cocoia.com/2010/iphone-4-icon-psd-file/