Hey,
im working on a 2D mobile game, with which i have some performance issues.
Right now, i scale down my sprites to the target resolution and import them into Unity in PNG format. With that method, the sprites takes a huge space in the memory.
I also tried to import a sprite using PSD importer. When i run the memory profiler, the PSD sprite took very little memory space, and i dont understand how. Those sprites are HUGE, that’s why i had to adjust the pixel per unit in the sprite inspector.
The sprite quality with PSD is way better than PNG, at the same time it takes less memory space.
Is there any downside to PSD when it comes to performance? The GPU will probably have to work more to render a more detailed sprite, even tho it takes less space, right? Unfortunately i cant test it my self, since either my Profiler is broken or my Android phone.
It doesn’t matter what your import file format is. It all gets converted to texture formats the GPU can use anyway.
So if im using psd to import HUGE sprites and scale them down with “pixel per unit”, it wont effect my performance negatively?
Hi,
the source material does not directly affect performances. In that sense, it does not matter if you use PNG or PSD.
What matters is the format it gets compressed to in Unity.
Your texture gets automatically compressed to a certain format that depends on diverse settings you choose for your texture in your editing software.
You can check which format it gets converted to in Unity by looking at the bottom of your texture inspector, you can also override this and choose a format yourself (see my screenshot).
It might be that you notice a difference between your PSD sprite and your PNG sprite because they get converted to a different format.
I hope that helps 
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