Designing iPhone application with Photoshop or any design tools

Question

Hi all, I need to know how to design new (different) user interface for iphone with photohsop or like that tools. I have already checked photshop design mockups for iphone over the internet, but i'm sure, i don't need that, these example psd files shows original iphone design elements.

I'm just looking to how to design new user interface and how to apply to iphone application from kick-start. Let me give an example; I need to design new tab bar and apply to my small application as well as uiview, uiview background, modal uiview, buttons like that.

Can someone share me their idea pls ?

Answer 1

The 'standard user interface controls' in iPhone are built into the system, which is why there are PSD's out there with those elements inside.

If you want to do a custom UI, you can do whatever you want, but you'll need to program the functionality.

For example, lots of productivity apps like 'To Do' and 'Remember The Milk' use the standard UI controls but with some extra colours or bitmaps added.

Games, on the other hand, tend to have totally customised UIs created in OpenGL. If you want this, you can have any UI you want as long as your programmers are comfortable programming for it.

Answer 2

If you're not writing a game, I'd highly recommend you try to stay with the standard controls. Users know what those controls mean and do, this reduces their learning curve for your application and makes them feel more comfortable with your app.

Answer 3

You design the custom elements you want and save them as PNG files. Lots of people have custom backgrounds on views, and custom buttons (in fact I would go so far as to say no app should stick with the standard buttons as they are rather blah).

For views and things you simply put a UIImageView in the background of the view. Buttons have a very handy mechanism where you can set button images for unpressed and pressed (selected) states, even in Interface Builder.

The only thing you mention customizing I would not, is the tab bar - that has a very specific look and specific icon needs (no color).

Answer 4

Unless you have a very good reason to replace the standard user interface elements, don't. Odds are, you will get them wrong and your application will look completely out-of-place on the device.

However, if you do want to test out mockups of your application interface, I recommend looking at Briefs, a new framework for prototyping iPhone applications. It lets you specify a series of images and how you would like to interact with them, and creates a working application from that. It's a very impressive framework for iPhone UI designers.

Answer 5

Firstly I draw on a paper. It's more flexible for me. It's enough time at monitor without that. If interested I used these design templates for hand drawing

Answer 6

iPhone and iPad Stencils from MobileStencil.com.

Also, matching iPhone and iPad Application SketchBooks from Apress.

Answer 7

You should try to look into Mac OS X's Interface Builder that comes with Xcode, the layout is pretty much predefined or at least, composed of predefined elements. The only thing you can actually "draw" with a powerful tool like Photoshop, are the images you can use within these elements.

The other way around is to use the Application-like-web-browsing capability of Safari within the iOS but you will end up making a web site in the end and that isn't what you want.

If you are looking for documentation about this, apple's developer area is the best place to start (and probably the best place at all) : http://developer.apple.com/