A very important, but also very difficult part during the development of an App is the work that has to be done on the App’s icon.

Since the icon is the first thing a user will recognise about your App when browsing (or searching) the App Store it is very crucial to come up with an icon design that allows you to positively differentiate yourself with the rest of the bunch. Even after installing the App on your phone there will be a fierce competition between all the other Apps on display. And certainly you don’t want to be the App that gets hidden in some folder because it is too ugly.

Apple requests the icon artwork in a variety of sizes for different purposes and resizing and testing whether the design currently under development in Photoshop will look as expected on the actual device can quickly become a chore and waste lots of precious working time.

No more.

A while ago I luckily stumbled over a little inexpensive App call “Prepo” which automates a lot of the boring and repetitive tasks when previewing those icons.

Prepo automatically resizes any artwork imported via simple Drag and Drop, exports it in the appropriate sizes depending on what you are designing for (OS X, iPad, iPhone, etc.). In its “Plus+” version, available for a minor fee, in combination with an iOS companion App, Prepo even allows for live preview on the device’s screen. This is especially useful since there are usually big differences between our working machine’s screens and the iOS device the icon is actually meant for.

I grew to be a big fan of Prepo and therefore would like to recommend it if you ever have the need of preparing icons for you Apps.