Integrate TexturePacker in your build toolchain or add it directly to XCode. When updating your assets just drop them into the assets folder. Rebuilding your project will also rebuild all sprite sheets with changes.

TexturePacker is the first tool which has direct support for cocos2d's new .pvr.ccz format! Especially when working with 16bit textures this new format is faster and smaller than even optimized PNG files.

TexturePacker will help you create simple sprite sheets up to 2048x2048 pixels by using GUI and command line. Extrude repeats the outer pixels around a shape to avoid flickering when tiling textures. Automated trimming, automated sizing, extreme fast automated layout.

You can export data files for Cocos2D, Sparrow SDK and Corona (TM) SDK. You got a problem or found a bug in TexturePacker? I usually come up with a solution for the problem withing 24h.

FEATURES:

Directly supported frameworks:
· Cocos2d iPhone – iPhone
· Corona SDK – iPhone & Android
· Sparrow – iPhone
· LibGDX – Java (Android + Desktop)
· LimeJS – Javascript / HTML5 framework

Layout algorithms:
TexturePacker currently shipps with 2 layout algorithms:
Basic:
· This is a layout algorithm best for tilemaps and simple animations without the need of additional data file. Sprites are simply pleaced in a row until the row is full. Then the next row starts. You may sort the sprites by name, width, height or area. This algorithm is FREE and can be used for all projects.
MaxRects:
· MaxRects is the best known algorithm for packing textures. It is fast and has a high packing ratio. Enabling rotation and trimming gets the best results (depending on your target framework). This algorithm is available in TexturePackerPro/CLI.

High quality color reduction:
· RGBA8888 images consume a big amount of memory and processing time. Woudn’t it be good to reduce both without loosing too much visual quality? By converting the sprite sheet to RGBA4444 memory usage is reduced by 50% and performance of the system increases!
· But simply reducing the colors may result in bad image quality since gradients won’t stay smooth in the resulting image. Low contrast parts in images tend to create islands of same colors – seen as rings in the center image of the example below.

· Image comparison: RGBA8888 (left), RGBA4444 without dithering (center), RGBA4444 with dithering (right)
· This effect can be reduced using a transparency preserving dithering. The effect of the dithering may give the sprite a bit of a grainy look – but if the sprites are moved even slow this won’t be recognizable to the user.