Wednesday, June 04, 2014

The Ideal iPad Wallpaper

Awhile back, I was trying to find out what the best resolution is for retina iPads with the new parallax wallpapers on iOS 7. Most site were uncertain, but guessed that the resolution involved padding about 500 extra pixels on the sides of a 2048x2048 image. Although this works, I have personally looked into the official, original Apple wallpaper files. These wallpapers are actually 2524x2524, which is the ideal iPad retina wallpaper resolution. However, it is worth noting that the majority of the wallpaper cannot actually be seen at any given moment. I made a template for my own use, and here are the usability zones:





It's hardly pixel-perfect, but it does give you a good idea about wallpaper layouts.
As you can see, the green zone is the only part of the wallpaper that will always be visible, regardless of the dock position and the orientation of the display. In my own testing, I found that the red zone was least important, as it is hard to see in any orientation or parallax movement. The grey boxes give a general idea where the dock will be in relation to the wallpaper when the iPad is in a neutral position.