.tga File — Truevision TGA

TGA (Truevision Graphics Adapter, also known as TARGA) is a raster image format developed by Truevision Inc. in 1984 for their video graphics adapter cards. TGA supports 8-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit color depths, with the 32-bit mode providing an 8-bit alpha channel for transparency — making it one of the earliest formats to support full alpha transparency. The format offers uncompressed and RLE (Run-Length Encoding) compressed variants. TGA became deeply established in the video game industry and 3D graphics world because of its reliable alpha channel support and straightforward structure. It was the standard texture format for many game engines and 3D rendering pipelines throughout the 1990s and 2000s. TGA remains used in game development, visual effects, and texture authoring, though PNG and DDS have increasingly replaced it. The format's simplicity — a fixed header followed by pixel data — makes it one of the easiest image formats to implement from scratch, making it popular in custom graphics engines and educational contexts.