resolution for previewing on iPhone with Skala Preview

[finedesign]

I am trying to preview app layouts on iPhone via Skala preview. When creating a new document, I use the default iPhone 5 (Retina) preset, but the dimensions are 320pt x 568pt – half what they should be in pixels: 640px x 1136px. And the layout is centered small in Skala on my phone. Of course I can zoom the layout to fit, but this results in everything pixelated. Adjusting the DPI doesn't change anything.

 

When I double the dimensions, the layout displays correctly in Skala. But I shouldn't have to override the default presents for every device. Also, when I open .ai files for app layouts, they always show up the same way...half size. 

 

Maybe the issue has something to do with my mixing pixels and points?

 

Does anyone use another preview app with Affinity? Is this on the Affinity roadmap?

[MattP]

Hi finedesign,

 

The dimensions of the template are 320pt x 568pt as you say - but at 144dpi (which is how Apple states UI should be designed - in points at a specified DPI) and this equates to producing 640px x 1136px on output to an image, but embedding the DPI into the file so it knows how many physical units it should occupy. I don't use Skala preview or know how it works but my initial suspicion is that the preview program isn't coping properly with DPI? I only suggest this as Xcode assets should be prepared for the device in the way we create them and it works for us. If this is the case, just change your document to be the correct pixel dimensions and set 72dpi and hopefully everything will be fine? Sorry I can't offer a better solution than this - but I think the assets are created correctly on export.

 

Thanks,

Matt

 

EDITED TO ADD: For the future, we'll be releasing a proper version of this and with hand-off allowing you to instantly move between editing the full design on your desktop/iPad then it'll be a really nice way to design whilst previewing  :)

[finedesign]

Thanks Matt–

 

I contacted the folks that make Skala and they seem surprised by the behavior as well. It looks like I either need to double the size of my layouts (and incur all kinds of resize complexity when importing/exporting assets) or just deal with sketchy .5x previews on my device when Skala scales it up.

 

I'm not clear if the iOS app you mention is designed to preview desktop layouts on iPhone. That is what I want to do.

 

If there is any other solution to previewing layouts on devices, please share!