Take SVG's and PNG's and automagically have them resized to all the different resolutions and included in your Xamarin Android, iOS, UWP, and WPF projects!
Blog Post: redth.codes/resizetizer-nt-shared-images-for-xamarin
Video:
A few years back I created a thing I called Resizetizer which helped solve the pain of resizing images to every single target density/resolution for iOS, Android, and UWP.
The original incarnation required that you define a .yaml file with all of your inputs and desired outputs. If you referenced this yaml file in your project and built it, the images would all be resized according to your config. You also had to specify all the various resolutions you wanted to output in the config file.
This was great, but we could do better yet! The Resizetizer NT (New Technology) improves the story in a few ways:
SharedImage
build actionFirst you need to add the ResizetizerNT
NuGet package to your shared code (netstandard2.0) project, as well as your Xamarin iOS/Android/UWP app projects. It's important to install it in all of your projects for this to work.
Next, add the images to your shared code (netstandard2.0) project as SharedImage
build actions:
<ItemGroup>
<SharedImage
Include="hamburger.svg"
BaseSize="40,20" />
</ItemGroup>
Or you can specify it for each project like this :
<ItemGroup Condition="$(_ResizetizerIsiOS) == 'True'">
<SharedImage Include="image.svg" BaseSize="44,44" />
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup Condition="$(_ResizetizerIsAndroid) == 'True'">
<SharedImage Include="image.svg" BaseSize="50,50" />
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup Condition="$(_ResizetizerIsUWP) == 'True'">
<SharedImage Include="image.svg" BaseSize="55,55" />
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup Condition="$(_ResizetizerIsWPF) == 'True'">
<SharedImage Include="image.svg" BaseSize="60,60" />
</ItemGroup>
These images can be .svg
or .png
types.
Notice the BaseSize
attribute which you will need to manually add. This is required for the resizer to know the baseline or nominal, or original (whatever you want to call it) density size. This is the size you would use in your code to specify the image size (eg: <Image Source="hamburger.png" WidthRequest="40" HeightRequest="20" />
). In Android this is the drawable-mdpi
resolution, on iOS you can consider it the @1x
resolution, and on UWP it's the scale-100
resolution.
When you build your app projects, they will invoke a target in your shared code project to collect all of the SharedImage
items to process. These items will all be resized and automatically included in your app project as the appropriate type for an image resource.
You can reference images just like you normally would. The important thing to note is that if your input image source is .svg
, you will actually reference a .png
in your app.
In Xamarin Forms you would use something like:
<Image Source="hamburger.png" WidthRequest="40" HeightRequest="20" />
If you'd like to render your images with a tint, you can set the TintColor
attribute property on the SharedImage
element. This renders your image with a color filter of "Source In" in SkiaSharp. This is particularly useful in cases where you have icons or simple images you'd like to render in different color than the source.
Example: <Image Source="hamburger.png" TintColor="#66b3ff" />
By default if no BaseSize
attribute is specified on the SharedImage
item, the image should not be resized at all and instead simply included as a standard image in the app head project (Resources/drawable
on android, etc.).
If an BaseSize
is specified, then the resizing rules apply to the image and different copies of the image should be made for the various display densities of each app head project.
Vectors provide the best results for resizing an image to the display densities of each device.
By default if no BaseSize
attribute is specified on the SharedImage
item, the vector should not resized at all and is simply included as a standard vector image in the app head project (Resources/drawable
on android, etc.).
On Android the vector should also be converted to a Vector Drawable format resource.
Since by its very nature a vector’s size is unknown, if it is to be resized, a BaseSize
must be included to support resizing to different display densities. Resize rules apply here.
When an image needs to be resized for various display densities we need to know it's baseline or standard 1.0 device display density scale or factor in order to derive other image sizes to resize for other densities.
For the purpose of adding images to a project this is being called the BaseSize
, and is specified in the project’s SharedImage
item.
When no BaseSize
is specified, on android this maps to drawable-mdpi
, on iOS this is the equivalent of @1x
, and on UWP it is scale-100
.
When an BaseSize
is specified this is considered the 1.0 scale factor for the images. All other density sizes are derived from this.
The original size is typically the expected density independent pixel size you intend to use the image in. For example this is the size you would intend to set for the RequestedWidth
and RequestedHeight
of a Xamarin.Forms Image control.
There are some default densities depending on target platform:
drawable-mdpi
drawable-hdpi
drawable-xhdpi
drawable-xxhdpi
drawable-xxxhdpi
@1x
@2x
@3x
scale-100
scale-200
scale-300
?scale-400
?4.0
Not sure if 3.0 and 4.0 scales are used in UWP or common. Need to decide if we should generate these or not. Interestingly UWP also allows for high vs low contrast images. Might be something to think about down the road.
Tizen? MacOS? WPF?
The proposed solution does not require but may benefit from some IDE customization or integration.
Adding items to a csproj manually is becoming more normal in sdk style projects.
It appears to be possible for us to add to the visual studio XSD for generating Intellisense inside project files so that attributes like BaseSize
will show up as possible options.
You can already add images to a project which default to be in the None
item group. You will be able to select SharedImage
as a build action. In addition it may be possible to add properties to the property editor for things like BaseSize
to be accessible from the IDE UI.
There is an opportunity with things like vectors to provide some other interesting features:
<SharedImage Include="my.svg" Size="10,10" TintColor="#123456" />
<SharedImage Include="my.svg" Size="10,10">
<!-- Maybe Apple and Android add 5.0 scale support before we do? -->
<OutputSize Scale="5.0" PathPrefix="drawable-xxxxhdpi" />
<OutputSize Scale="5.0" FileNamePostfix="@5x" />
</SharedImage>
Completed
In Progress
TintColor
support for SVG