Review: PaintCode excels at transforming vector images into code
Pixel precision is an essential part of the software experience that users have come to expect from OS X and iOS. It requires a kind of accuracy that is usually best left in the hands of experienced designers who know how to manipulate every detail of images and icons to get the best possible result. This goal is time-consuming and expensive to achieve, however, and only really makes sense when an interface has completely taken form.
By the same token, there are some instances in which pixel-level perfection is hard or impossible to achieve due to a number of constraints, like overall file size, the need to support arbitrary resolutions, or, perhaps, the requirement for complex animations. In these cases, the old developer fallback is to use of vector images, which, being based on the mathematical representation of an arbitrary set of curves, are rendered on the fly and scale arbitrarily without loss of resolution.
Even though both OS X and iOS have excellent built-in programming interfaces for vector rasterization, their support for popular vector file formats like SVG is limited, often requires the use of external libraries, and makes it hard (though by no means impossible) to manipulate the resulting images in fine detail.
PixelCut’s PaintCode (Mac App Store link) aims at solving these problems with its ability to transform a vector illustration into a series of code instructions. The code can then be embedded directly into an app written in either Objective-C or C# using Xamarin and give developers significant flexibility in its use.
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