How to use it
- Optionally set a size, and tick “Round to a power of two” for textures.
- Drop in your images.
- Download the TGA files.
The files this makes
Uncompressed 32-bit TGA: 8 bits each for red, green, blue and alpha, stored top-down with the TGA 2.0 footer. That is the most widely accepted variety. Game engines, texture tools, Blender, 3ds Max, Maya and modding tools all read it. Images without transparency get a fully opaque alpha channel.
Power-of-two sizes
Many engines prefer, and some older ones require, textures whose sides are powers of two: 256, 512, 1024, 2048. Tick Round to a power of two and each side is snapped to the nearest one during conversion. A 1000 × 600 image becomes 1024 × 512, for example. For a square texture, make the image square first with the square tool.
Size on disk
Uncompressed TGAs take four bytes per pixel, so a 2048 × 2048 texture is 16 MB. Engines compress textures when building a game, so the source size rarely matters, but it adds up in version control.
PNG and TGA compared
| PNG | TGA | |
|---|---|---|
| First released | 1996 | 1984 |
| Compression | Lossless | None or RLE, lossless |
| Transparency | Yes, including soft edges | Yes, 8-bit |
| Animation or pages | Only as APNG, rarely used | No |
| Best for | Screenshots, graphics, text and transparency | Game textures and 3D pipelines |
| Support | Universal | Game engines, 3D and image editors; not browsers |
Questions people ask
Does the TGA keep transparency?
Yes, as a full 8-bit alpha channel.
Is the TGA compressed?
No. Uncompressed TGA is read by the widest range of tools.
What does the power-of-two option do?
It snaps each side to the nearest power of two, such as 512 or 1024, which many game engines prefer.