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Design

Maxim Andreev
Maxim Andreev
24,529 Points
Posted by Maxim Andreev
Maxim Andreev
24,529 Points

iOS app specsheet

Hi,

After the design is fully done (In Photoshop or otherwise) and all the icons are exported to 1 and 2x png's. Is there any software out there that makes it easy to create a specsheet for the developer?

Thank you

1 Answer

Nick Perdomo
Nick Perdomo
10,529 Points
Nick Perdomo
Nick Perdomo
10,529 Points

Hi Maxim, Nothing (yet) beats handcrafted specs denoting spacing between elements, functionality intentions, and CSS snippets for style. However, there are a few tools that provide a good starting point:

  1. Specctr - A great plugin for Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, and Fireworks that provides the most specing options I've seen. It's mostly geared toward web specs but it would still help with iOS.

  2. PaintCode - This really isn't for specs but it will allow you to import PSDs keeping vector shapes and basic effects intact, and then export them to Objective-C or Swift source code. This requires a little more work on your end but it provides a great deal of assurance that the app will have the appearance you intend because you're removing the "designer to developer" translation that must occur when describing a design in plain English.

  3. PNG Express - Specing tools are decent here with a very fair price of $29 USD. The export options are second to none as it allows you to export a myriad of resolution buckets such as standard and Retina for iOS and mdhpi, hdpi, xhdpi, etc. for Android. I personally use this for exporting only and handcraft my specs separately.

Hope this helps,

Nick