Tools to make CSS sprites? [closed]

Question

Are there any good tools to make css sprites?

IDEALLY I'd want to give it a directory of images and an existing .css file that refers to those images and have it create a big image optimized with all the little images AND change my .css file to refer to those images.

At the least I'd want it to take a directory of images and generate a big sprite and the .css necessary to use each as a background.

Are there any good photoshop plugins or fully blown apps to do this?

Answer 1

ZeroSprites is a CSS sprites generator aimed at area minimization using VLSI floorplaning algorithms.

Answer 2

if you are using ruby on rails, there is an easy to install library to generate css sprites.

http://github.com/aberant/spittle

Answer 3

Not a direct answer but to my fellow developers and web integrators, consider simply aligning each sprite to powers of two; eg a 16 pixel or 32 pixel grid. It makes calculating offsets in the CSS file much easier. All the white space between does not matter as the gifd and png formats compress that very well.