Talk:Truevision TGA

Does this format have any patent complications? --I am not good at running 06:37, 25 May 2005 (UTC)


 * No, the only supported compression technique is RLE, which is not patent encumbered. -- Kaszeta 7 July 2005 20:09 (UTC)

Which programmes can be used a) to view TGA images correctly and b) to convert a TGA file into a JPEG? --Hotblack 25 December 2005 14:12 (UTC)


 * Lots of programs. ImageMagick, for one.  -- Kaszeta 17:08, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

What does this mean: "Despite its limited colour-depth" ?! TGA supports 32 bits per pixel. What more could you want? 48 bit color? I just don't understand this line! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.147.150.131 (talk • contribs) 00:00, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with the above. Also, what's the __ character in this sentence?
 * The format can store image data with 1__32 bits of precision per pixel.
 * The format can store image data with 1�32 bits of precision per pixel.
 * To me, it looks like a question mark. What text encoding is it supposed to be? Can someone who can see it change it to Unicode?


 * &mdash;Dan 19:33, 29 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I think it was just a corrupted en dash; I've fixed it. 32 bits per pixel is only 8 bits per channel (red, green, blue and alpha), which is not enough for high-end image editing. --Zundark 19:52, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Sweet, thanks for fixing that (and for explaining the color depth issue). &mdash;Dan 20:49, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I read the tga 2.0 spec and nowhere does it say that it is limited to 32 bit depth. Where did you get this information? I don't see anything that would prevent the creation of 48 bit depth images: the pixel depth field is 1 byte long... As for 64 bit, I can see the limitation because the attribute depth is only four bits long, so the max would be 15 (which wouldn't make any sense), is this right? (I have added a Citation Needed where appropriate) -- j--f 13:43, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Some minor modifications
Hello, I did some improvements to the article, clarifing the uses of the TGA image forma file.Ricardo Cancho Niemietz 16:55, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

TGA programs needed?
The article has begun discussing programs which save images in tga format. I think it would be nice too if someone adds links to good freeware tools for viewing/manipulating/converting TGA files. I found Image Magick too difficult for unexperienced users and it is almost impossible to find a nice freeware Windows program for converting TGA. --Lefter 08:46, 4 October 2007 (UTC)


 * See Image viewer, Comparison of image viewers. I personally use IrfanView because it's freeware, easy to use and fast. --62.224.119.115 23:02, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Irfanview is great. It's batch conversion tool is what I've always used for tga files. 58.161.98.63 (talk) 12:08, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

The list?
Does anyone else doubt the necessity of mentioning, as separate entries of the list, games that use TGA to save screenshots? As TGA is one of the most common image formats for that, I think those could be, in the name of efficiency, replaced by a line stating "Many (pc?) games use the TGA format for saving screenshots, including (a few examples here)" As could be guessed by reading the list, TGA is also probably the most common format for textures in game engines. However, the list as it stands is already quite long in contrast to the article, and if fans of every game out there keep adding entries like this, it's going to keep growing. -- D64 (talk) 19:20, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking the exact same thing. --Boompiee (talk) 19:26, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I wholeheartedly agree. The list is pointless and could be filtered down to a single generic sentence or removed altogether. pfl (talk) 11:36, 26 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Whether it's necessary or not, I just put the information into a table so it's easier to read. - Keng  -  t  |  c  - 23:00, 22 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree. It seems superfluous. Jogar2 (talk) 15:35, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Seriously flawed
To claim that one 24bit file format somehow has an inferior color bit depth to another 24 bit format where both are linear and integer based, is flawed. There is no difference between 24bit tiff and 24bit tga, especially not the way it is presented in this article. Actually TGA is 32bit format, where 8 bits are reserved for alpha channel so if anything, TGA is superior to TIFF of older days when it didn't support alpha. Today, tiff can be anything which means it's quality is better if we are taking about 16bit tiffs which support 16 bits per channel, giving 48bit color.

It is also strange that the article gives an impression that tga is somehow better suited for tv work because of TV resolution... as if TGA comes standard in TV resolution or something along those lines. The article also states that high-end pre-press requires more quality then TV where the exact opposite is true: contrast ratio of a printed image can be easily covered with a lower bit depth image, and TV images, especially HD, require higher bit depth due to their wider tonal range.

Someone with better understanding of image file formats needs to rewrite this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.171.216.248 (talk) 23:52, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Seriously flawed or just vague
I think that whoever wrote the paragraph with

"TGA is still used extensively throughout the animation and video industry because its primary intended outputs are standard TV screens, not color printed pages."

Was thinking about / refering to the format the colours are stored as, and not the bit depth.

TGA supports RGB only (as far as I know), this is the standard way colours are stored to be represented on monitors and TVs. Colour printed pages on the other hand specify colours in CMYK.

Most printers combine cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black) inks to create colours and not red green and blue inks. When an image is printed it needs to be converted.

The process to convert RGB to CMYK, often results in some variations of the colours. So when a picture (with colours stored as RGB) is printed the image often looks slightly different

Many other image formats allow colours to be stored as CMYK, thus when printed they correspond better to the image displayed on the artists monitor.

I do agree that the paragraph is rather vague, and should be updated.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.210.90.180 (talk) 10:13, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

TGA specification source may be in jeopardy
The external link to the most up to date document of the specification (http://www.dca.fee.unicamp.br/~martino/disciplinas/ea978/tgaffs.pdf) should perhaps be replaced, as all of the other files in the "ea978" directory, including other pdfs, return a 404 error, which leads one to think that they are doing cleanup or something. 70.119.44.175 (talk) 15:47, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Intro
"TGA files are in widespread use due to their simplicity and ease of implementation and lack of encumbering patents." Is this really true? I've only come across the file in TF2 screenshots. How bout "TGA files are popular in some circles due to their simplicity and ease of implementation and lack of encumbering patents. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sween64 (talk • contribs) 12:11, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Filename extensions
According to Free File Viewer there are five filename extensions for Targa image files: of which the first three are mentioned here. Are they — Smjg (talk) 09:43, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
 * .icb
 * .tga
 * .vda
 * .vst
 * .win
 * different formats?
 * divergent third-party extensions to accommodate image types beyond what .tga provides or originally provided?
 * extensions of the format to accommodate different metadata?
 * just different extensions for the same format?

No mention of how to specify image direction
It only says that bits 5-4 in the image descriptor field are used. But which values indicate which directions? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.2.17.166 (talk) 17:16, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

use in adelie, varvara, uxn
The Hundred Rabbits artist collective seems to like the TGA format. Their slideshow program Adelie supports TGA images. Varvara, a personal computer system built on top of the Uxn virtual machine, uses TGA images as the standard image transfer format between Varvara and the host operating system. Skyfaller (talk) 23:24, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Incomplete description for color/alpha channels.
Given this article covers almost everything someone would need to create tga from scratch, there's some small but crucial omissions. Perhaps worth explicitly stating the order of colors and alpha within tga, perhaps in the `Image data` table entry? Looks like it's bgra (where b is in the least significant bit). Also, not much is said about the size of the color channels. At a guess, I'd expect them to be ("Pixel depth" - "alpha channel depth") / 3, then rounded down? I guess the potential leftover bits wouldn't normally matter since any common usage wont have any. 185.190.93.85 (talk) 10:49, 14 March 2024 (UTC)