Skipping the 'CompressResources' build step for Xcode iPhone apps

You can add "IPHONE_OPTIMIZE_OPTIONS=-skip-PNGs" to your project settings to prevent the png mangling, but be careful with it, you might need to optimize the icon and Default.png separately then.

The iphoneos-optimize script converts PNG files into a nonstandard format that is optimized for display on the iPhone. The script will convert any files with the png extension that it finds inside your app bundle.

I had a similar problem, and solved it by giving my file the extension _png (i.e., prefixed an underscore). iphoneos-optimize ignored it and left it a regular PNG file. If you can deal with it that way, it's probably a lot safer than mucking about with the build scripts.

• Open build settings
• Under "packaging" choose Compress PNG files
• Choose "NO"