How do I prepare images for all the Android resolutions?

Question

In iOS preparing graphics is simple. There are either a normal image (height x width) or a retina image which is @2x (2 times height x 2 times width).

However, since I'm new to Android, I see a ton of drawable-* folders in Eclipse where the * can be "hdpi" or "ldpi" or "mdpi" or "xhdpi" or "xxhdpi". Can someone very clearly and simply list for me what I must do to satisfy each of the display possibilities so my images will look right in each instance? I'm envisioning an answer will be a bullet list with each "*" listed and a sub-bullet list including the things that must be done.

I'd also really enjoy an answer that would start with the highest density and greatest dimension image and working down since I'll be creating in Photoshop and will be reducing quality from a master image.

http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html#screen-independence. Check the documentation. Read the doc completely. — Raghunandan, May 03 '13 at 05:05
http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html and http://developer.android.com/training/multiscreen/screensizes.html — Dhaval Parmar, May 03 '13 at 05:06
This [chart](http://stackoverflow.com/a/11581786/321697) should help too. — Kevin Coppock, May 03 '13 at 05:22
check out this also http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16706076/font-size-and-images-for-different-devices — Bhavesh Jethani, Jul 24 '14 at 09:30

score 31 · Answer 1 · answered May 03 '13 at 05:29

i got this off of this site a while back, it still comes in handy

xlarge screens are at least 960dp x 720dp
large screens are at least 640dp x 480dp
normal screens are at least 470dp x 320dp
small screens are at least 426dp x 320dp
Generalised Dpi values for screens:

ldpi Resources for low-density (ldpi) screens (~120dpi)
mdpi Resources for medium-density (mdpi) screens (~160dpi). (This is the baseline density.)
hdpi Resources for high-density (hdpi) screens (~240dpi).
xhdpi Resources for extra high-density (xhdpi) screens (~320dpi).
Therefore generalised size of your resources (assuming they are full screen):

ldpi
Vertical = 426 * 120 / 160 = 319.5px
Horizontal = 320 * 120 / 160 = 240px
mdpi
Vertical = 470 * 160 / 160 = 470px
Horizontal = 320 * 160 / 160 = 320px
hdpi
Vertical = 640 * 240 / 160 = 960px
Horizontal = 480 * 240 / 160 = 720px
xhdpi
Vertical = 960 * 320 / 160 = 1920px
Horizontal = 720 * 320 / 160 = 1440px

px = dp*dpi/160

score 8 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 25 '17 at 15:50

8

In Android Studio just go to File -> New -> Image Asset and create your images right out of the IDE.

edited Jun 25 '17 at 15:50

ItamarG3

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answered Jul 07 '15 at 19:55

BigPun86

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I can only find an option to create Icons. How do I import any image to be used in the project? – Joel Broström Nov 08 '20 at 13:56

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered May 03 '13 at 05:20

On Android we usually handle image sizes in units of "dp" or "dip" which stands for device independent pixel. 1 dip = 1 pixel, on a mdpi screen. There are loads of devices out there with different screen densities, not just normal and retina, so there are multiple DPI buckets a device's screen may fall into:

ldpi (low dpi): around 120 dpi
mdpi (medium dpi): around 160 dpi
hdpi (high dpi): around 240 dpi
xhdpi (xtra high dpi): around 320 dpi

Note that these are buckets, so a device with a 170 dpi screen will count as an mdpi device.

Let's say that you have a vector based image in PS and you need to create an image resource for Android and you'd like to support all these screen densities. Let's say that image needs to be 100x100 dip large. So you create a 100x100 pixel version for mdpi, a 150x150 pixel version for hdpi, 200x200 for xhdpi, and 75x75 for ldpi. You can think of "mdpi - xhdpi" on Android as "normal - retina" on iOS.

As for the larges image size that you can use, I really can't say. There's no hard limit as far as I know, but the device obviously won't be able to load a 20000x20000 bitmap into memory without downsampling because of heap limits.

Some more explanation:The larger the screen are, and the better resolution they have, thhe the higher is the dp measurement. Some screen of the same size have different number of pixels, that is a different dpi also. So they need a different resource ( the high resolution one with more pixels obviously). — sivi, Jan 18 '14 at 14:56

Alexander Kulyakhtin · Answer 4 · 2016-06-21T16:45:28.003

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There is an online tool for that Android Asset Studio And also there is File|New|Android Icon Set in Eclipse

edited Jun 21 '16 at 16:45

answered May 03 '13 at 05:10

Alexander Kulyakhtin

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Aren't these files are too small for representation of the image on mobile devices? Isn't it only for the Icon? – sivi Jan 18 '14 at 14:49
Updated the link. Not sure if it's an official tool or not. AS itself has a similar built-in tool for that now. – Alexander Kulyakhtin Jun 21 '16 at 16:46
The AS tool is meant for icon size image, so it's pretty limiting. – Sakiboy Apr 03 '17 at 20:32

How do I prepare images for all the Android resolutions?

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