Texture pack

A texture pack is a collection of files that is used to change the in-game textures of blocks, items, mobs and the GUI. They are zip files that have various PNG images in them and a pack.txt. The native resolution of Minecraft's Texture is 16×16 (measured pixels in block height and width). 32×32, 64×64, 128×128, 256×256 and 512×512 are refered to as ‘HD’. Official support for 16×16 texture packs was added in Alpha 1.2.2. Official support for high resolution texture packs was added in Beta 1.8.

All versions of Minecraft support custom textures, albeit old versions requiring you to modify the minecraft.jar file. High resolution texture packs are supported on all versions without a patch, however certain textures have errors or may not be changed.



Installation
1. Download a texture pack in a ZIP file format, do not unzip. If you create your own textures, you need to ZIP them. For in-depth instructions on obtaining the files to make a your own custom texture pack go to Tutorials/Custom Texture Packs.

2. Run Minecraft. If you already have Minecraft running, make sure you save and quit the world: you need to be in the main menu to continue.

3. Click Mods and Texture Packs button.

4. Click Open Texture Pack Folder button; this will open the folder where minecraft stores all texture packs. If nothing happens, you need to find the folder manually. Depending on your operating system it is:
 * Windows XP/Vista/7:
 * Linux:
 * Mac OS X:

5. Do not close Minecraft. Place the texture pack (ZIP file) in the opened folder, do not unzip.

6. In a few seconds the texture pack will appear in Minecraft. Select it and click Done. The texture pack is now applied, you may load your world and see the difference.

Tips

 * Texture packs may redesign only some textures. So if the main menu looks the same after you select a pack, this doesn't mean the pack is not working.
 * You may install many texture packs. The texture pack list can be scrolled by dragging the scrollbars up or down.
 * Minecraft may lock the currently used texture pack (for example, if the pack contains custom textures for user interface), so the file can't be overwritten. If you need to update the pack, you may need to temporarily switch to the default pack and then overwrite the file.

Texture Pack Creation
To create a custom texture pack, the files you wish to modify must be extracted from minecraft.jar with an archiving or decompression program such as WinRAR or 7-Zip. They can then be edited with any image editing program that can read/write the PNG file format and handle transparency (Adobe Fireworks and Photoshop are suitable for this). A program such as Gimp, or Paint.NET will work well, and both are provided free of charge. Edit each PNG file as desired, and save the PNGs as 32 bits, to preserve transparency. Then, create a zip file of the files modified, preserving all folder hierarchy. The root folder of the zip must have the files and folders listed below, or else they will not be changed. If you find that nothing changes when you select your texture pack, make sure that the files are in the root of the zip and not one folder in.

If you have Photoshop or Gimp installed on your computer, you can also use .psd templates to create your own texture pack. They're all organized in layers, every block with its own named layer, facilitating the texture pack creation. They're available in resolutions from 8X8 to 512X512. Check out the forum thread to download them: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/603720-8x8-16x16-32x32-64x64-128x128-256x256-512x512-173-texture-pack-templates/



Trivia

 * Prior to the Alpha 1.2.2 update, users would need to manually change the texture packs by overwriting their minecraft.jar files or a patcher.
 * Prior to Beta 1.8, You had to use a 3rd Party Mod in order to run HD texture packs.
 * The selected texture pack is saved to the options.txt file in the .minecraft folder, so you can also manually change the "skin:" value to the name of the .zip

Resources

 * Vote for your favourite Texture Pack here.
 * The official, unofficial list of texture packs on the Minecraft Forum (over 150 textures)
 * a complete list of files used in the texture pack

Videos

 * Making 16×16 texture packs
 * Installing HD Packs