Why don't four 512x512 images atlas into one 1024x1024?

Questions & Answers
1

Using the atlasing system in 2017 I’ve been able to save a massive amount of texture memory and draw calls, but one thing that still gets me is that the packing seems to have some indeterminate amount of padding that can’t be overridden.

The Problem:
I have four 512x512 sprites, which i expect to atlas into one 1024x1024 image. However, they will default to a 2048x2048. If I set the max texture size to 1024, they will create four useless 512 atlases

The Question:
Is there a way to get them into one 1024x1024 atlas?

2

According to the docs, the minium achievable padding with the packer is 2 pixels:

But in your case, the packer might not be the right tool to choose from. Since you have perfectly sized textures, why don’t you merge them with e.g. Photoshop or even MS Paint?