Question

I’m developing a universal app and I wanted to use some of the backgrounds found on subtlepatterns.com and on downloading them I’m only seeing two png files (regular png & 2x png). How do I use them both for iPhone and iPad (including retina displays)?. Do I have to scale them to support all resolutions?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You need to create a pattern as the background color for your views. It won’t matter what the size of the view is and the retina version will be chosen automatically if you include both files in your project. For example:

UIImage *bgimg = [UIImage imageNamed:@"gray_jean"];
self.view.backgroundColor = [UIColor colorWithPatternImage:bgimg];

And if you have 2 files in your project:

[e-mail]
gray_jean.png

It should work in any situation; the image will be tiled to fill any view background and the retina version used automatically for retina screens. Be careful though because in some of those patterns the non-retina version is a PNG file while the @2x retina version is a JPEG file.