iPhone-Simulator Cropper – a must have tool

A week or so ago I followed a link from Ray Wenderlich‘s excellent web site to a page where I found the iPhone-Simulator Cropper application.
I must say it’s incredibly useful and I totally wished I knew about it earlier. The iPhone-Simulator Cropper helps you out to create screenshots out of your app running inside the iPhone’s simulator. It does not say very complicated but it’s actually a big time-saver.

iPhone-Simulator Cropper download and install

The Cropper is developed by Oliver Fürniß and it’s available for free. Just head to :http://www.curioustimes.de/iphonesimulatorcropper/ and download the zipped application. Then move it to your Applications folder.
Keep in mind the Cropper is running only on Snow Leopard.

When do you need the iPhone-Simulator Cropper?

Imagine the very real situation in which you are releasing an iPhone app – after months of preparation, coding and designing you are ready to submit it for approval. Exactly at this point isnot the time to overlook things. The very first (and most probably the only thing) the customers will see on your iTunes app page will be: 1) the price & 2) the screenshots. If you don’t have a huge marketing budget, or if you are not a well known brand, the screenshots are your best bet in iTunes.
So, you have the app ready, you want to make good screenshots. There are a paid and a lite version, and you had few friends translate the app in German, French, Spanish and Korean; we add English to those and you have 2 versions x 5 languages x 5 screenshot slots = 50 screenshots. And that’s when we take it you release only an iPhone version. If your app supports iPad, just multiply the last result by 2 = 100 screenshots. (I’m not here to bust the myth about 24hr app creating, but the numbers speak for themselves … )
I think the case is clear that you need a tool to automate the process.

How to use the iPhone-Simulator Cropper

Just open your app in the iPhone Simulator and start the Cropper too. You’ll see several options you can choose from.

Purpose defines the type of screenshots you are looking for. If you are making the screenshots for iTunes choose “iTunes Connect / App Store” and you will be making screenshots of the screen of the Simulator only. Here is very important to choose also the proper setting for the next option “Remove Statusbar”. If your app uses the full screen of the iPhone choose “NO”, if the iPhone status bar is visible while your app is running then choose “YES”.
If you want nice screenshots of the device running your app then choose “Website (iPhone device from Apple Marketing)” this will produce really nice image of the iPhone device having your app running.
You can play also with the rest of the Purpose settings and check which one you like best.
iTunes screenshot (the screen only)

Website / Apple marketing image

See the difference? Great work with the device imagery!
A couple of more options to set before actually taking screenshots:

Next choose where the produced screenshots will be saved and you can (if you want) change the filename template to use. Note the program will automatically produce file names with incremental number (the %COUNTER% placeholder in the filename template)
The Counter field at the bottom of the window shows you the current incremental number. Very handy – if you took a bad screenshot, but you want your files to still keep the numbering, just delete the bad screenshot and press the arrow down next to the counter field.
So when you’re all set keep hitting the “Take screenshot” button and the Cropper will do all the grabbing, cropping and saving for you.

That’s a wrap up about the iPhone-Simulator Cropper

In the end I just want to mention that if you want to take screenshots of your app running the iPad Simulator it is possible to have problems. The iPad simulator should be 100% scale and have no scrollbars on window title whatsoever. This would be the case in big screen resolutions. I have the 21.5″ iMac and I couldn’t make iPad screenshots, but the author – Oliver is aware of the problem, maybe he’ll find a way how to deal with this issue. (If you did lot of screen grabbing, remote window controlling with Cocoa, maybe give him the heads up on what you know? Just saying … )
Another feature definitely worth mentioning is that the Cropper actually can be used from the command line. Definitely very useful if you are producing screenshots of a game. Just put together a bash script (or any other script) to produce a screenshot each 5 seconds and comfortably play your game while the screenshots are piling up for your review later on.

So, download page for iPhone-Simulator Cropper –http://www.curioustimes.de/iphonesimulatorcropper/ .