How to automate exporting multiple PNG with different size from Photoshop? for Android

Question

I have a PSD file with 96x96 resolution. Now I want to save this as four PNG files with different resolutions such as 36x36, 48x48, 72x72, 96x96. Instead of adjusting the image size manually 4 four times and saving as option, can I automate this somehow?

Answer 1

Not a complete solution, but this might help someone who's come here from google.

If you save with the 'Save for Web' dialog [File > Save for Web] you can resize during the saving process, the options are on the right hand side under 'Image Size'.

I do this quite often when I need a couple of different sizes for an image, although as the other responses have noted, if you are designing icons, use vectors, it'll make your life so much easier.

Answer 2

Create your icons in mdpi and use this Photoshop Action to export it in ldpi, hdpi and xhdpi. From mdpi to xhdpi it works good, but ldpi and hdpi looks a bit blurred.

Link to the Article
Download the Photoshop Action

Answer 3

There's no good way to go from 96 down to 36 automatically. Even at 48 you're going to see your design start to fall apart.

The only benefit would be if you have a lot of icons to export in this way and you plan to come back and clean them up. You can record it as an action or use jsx, if you're so inclined.

For your particular design, I would experiment with going down in steps or exporting each version from the original 96px version. Usually steps are best but on some designs it can introduce progressive amounts of distortion.

Answer 4

How many times do you need to export the icon? If it's just the one icon, your best option is probably just to draw everything using vectors and layer styles, resize the document, make any adjustments required and save the PNG (optionally keeping the PSD for future exporting).

If you need to repeat the process many times, I'd recommend setting everything up as a sprite sheet with slices.

Here's something I wrote on the topic (includes many exporting techniques): Exporting from Photoshop.

When designing icons, you often need to manually tweak the smaller sizes individually — might be worth keeping that in mind as you build all the sizes.