Mobile app graphics

kryptonmight

I've an idea for a Windows phone app and if I decide to publish it rather than just use it for my own use, I'll need to include some proper images/graphics that will appear if it's pinned to the start screen etc.

I'm pretty useless when it comes to resolutions and things like that and sometimes I just grab a image off the net and use it but when the tile is increased or decreased in size, the resolution and aspect ratio suffers.

Is there an easy/dummies way to get graphics to appear correctly? Ideally a piece of software where I could add the image and pick the size/aspect ratio I want and it fixes it up for me?

The Corinthian

It's a bit difficult to understand what you're asking. On the face of it, it sounds like you have difficulty with optimization, in which case, I'd Google a few tutorials on Web optimization of graphics, so that you at least know the basics.

If more complex than that then, you're seeking a solution to the same dilemma that has been asked in Web development for a long time.

Back in the nineties, you had the Webmaster; this was someone who could code in HTML, Perl and some of that new fancy JavaScript, but could also do the design and graphics.

By the noughties both the technical and graphical side of Web development had diverged, because the skills involved had increased to the point whereby it necessitated specialization. Jacks of all Trades are still around, but the price they pay is that they're 'masters of none', as the expression goes; what they can do either technically or graphically will be limited, when compared to a specialized graphics or programming professional.

So while knowing the basics of the other skill will always be essential; a programmer can work with layered graphics, create simple ones or can carry out a degree of optimization and a designer will know their way around code, even if they don't understand it. However, there's a limit to being a Jacks of all Trades, before you start losing ground in your 'core' discipline, so in many cases, you're better off farming such work out to others.