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I have a project that has already been heavily developed and all of a sudden we realized that we needed a set of images translated. I have the translated images, but I am unsure how to apply them to my project.

What is the easiest way to implement localization on a number of images that are already referenced in a project?

The images are referenced by object named. So @"xyz", rather than @"xyz.png". Also the images' locations are set to "Relative to Group", although I suppose I could change this, although I don't know what to.


[I've read the following, but it was unclear and get info doesn't have a localization option: localize many images in Xcode at once? ]

EDIT: There are 74 images to be localized [for each of three languages] EDIT: added how the images are referenced.

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up vote 5 down vote accepted

First of all, make sure you set the localizations in your project:

enter image description here

You should have *.lproj folders in your project folder. One for each localization (en.lproj, de.lproj etc). Add the localized images to the right folder. You shouldn't have to change the code, if you used the normal ways to load your images ([UIImage imageNamed:@xyz.png"]). iOS will simple load the correct one depending on the user's language settings.

You may have to create the localization folder in the directory where the original image existed in order to not have to change the paths of the resources. So if the path of your image is myfolder/myimage.png, then the en.lproj and fr.lproj folders would go in myfolder.

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Which directory is the project folder? There is the root, then we have a mall folder and that is where most things are. There is also a test folder and some other similar folders (unfortunately I don't know much about it as I was suddenly thrown on the project and the previous dev left) we call the resource name, so xyz.png would be xyz. This would also mean we reference our images by name, so i would have to add all resources to my xcode project. In otherwords, I am unsure adding the directories in the correct location would work, but I'll try once you answer my first question. Btw thanks! –  Jason McCarrell Dec 17 '12 at 21:02
Also my images are set to "location: relative to group" should I change this? Also, do I have to delete my old image references, in order for it to default to the correct language, or will the language overwrite? –  Jason McCarrell Dec 17 '12 at 21:26
I tried simply adding the images to the localization folder under the same directory hierarchy as they were in my Resources folder, but that didn't work. The old images were still used. –  Jason McCarrell Dec 17 '12 at 21:30
So after using the localization button, I realize all that it does is create the localizable folder and puts the image in it. So you were nearly correct. The difference is that the localization folders end up in the directory of the original image. –  Jason McCarrell Jan 4 '13 at 17:25
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