What is TGA?

TGA Format Description

TGA (Truevision Graphics Adapter), also referred to as TARGA (Truevision Innovative Raster Graphics Adapter) file format, it is truly a raster graphics file format. It is accustomed to shop and inter-change deep pixel images, clean paint, and picture manipulation programs that require to keep picture information as high as 32 bits per pixel.

Produced by Truevision Corporation. (now Pinnacle Methods), the TGA format is nowadays possibly one of the most globally supported format as, unlike other graphic file formats, it is relatively few of versions. It may possibly support colour maps, alpha channels, gamma values, postage stamp pictures (also referred to as 'thumbnails'), textual data, and developer-definable information in shade depths up to 32 bits, TGA is support 8, 16, 24, and 32 bit color depths.

This well-defined format can also be easily to decompress. Its structure consists of a Header (composed of image information and palette information), a image Identification Region, one Map, and Bitmap Information. The following optional fields may possibly follow to Bitmap Information:- Developer Directory (that consists of tags pointing to data saved within the TGA file); Developer Region; Extension Region (that includes details primarily based inside the header from the bitmap file); Color-Correction Table; Postage Stamp Image; Scan Line Table; together with a Footer (pointing towards the developer and extension regions).

The TGA format (with file extension '.tga') is most extensively used through the animation and gaming industry. The cause being their output is regarding the TV screen and PC monitors, and not for the printing (TGA's colour depths aren't suited for the press). TGA may also be popular for still-video editing, it is simply because TGA's capacity to become saved within a digital frame buffer.

TGA files might be opened up making use of Adobe Illustrator, Apple QuickTime Player, Corel New paint Store Expert, and Factory Image Ripper instruments on Microsoft Residence windows and Apple Preview, Apple QuickTime Player, and Adobe Illustrator on Mac OS.

TGA File Header
The TGA header is eighteen bytes in length and is identical in both versions of the TGA file format. The structure of the TGA header is as follows:

typedef struct _TgaHeader
{
    BYTE IDLength; /* 00h Size of Image ID field */
    BYTE ColorMapType; /* 01h Color map type */
    BYTE ImageType; /* 02h Image type code */
    WORD CMapStart; /* 03h Color map origin */
    WORD CMapLength; /* 05h Color map length */
    BYTE CMapDepth; /* 07h Depth of color map entries */
    WORD XOffset; /* 08h X origin of image */
    WORD YOffset; /* 0Ah Y origin of image */
    WORD Width; /* 0Ch Width of image */
    WORD Height; /* 0Eh Height of image */
    BYTE PixelDepth; /* 10h Image pixel size */
    BYTE ImageDescriptor; /* 11h Image descriptor byte */
} TGAHEAD;

IDLength is the amount of considerable bytes within the image identification subject starting at byte 12h (following the header) and may be in the array of 0 to 255. The IDLength set to 0 indicates that there's no image identification subject inside the TGA file.

ColorMapType signifies no matter whether the TGA file consists of a palette. A value of 1 indicates the presence of the palette, a value of 0 signifies that no palette is incorporated. If this value is not 0 and 1, then it can be almost certainly a value certain towards the system or developer that created the TGA file. Truevision reserves the ColorMapType values 0 to 127 for its extremely very own use and allots values 128 to 255 for use by developers.

ImageType is the image type which stored in the TGA file. You are going to find currently seven TGA picture sorts. Colormapped images (pseudocolor) use a palette. Truecolor pictures do not use a palette and retailer their pixel information straight in the picture information, despite the reality that truecolor TGA picture files could contain a palette that's used to retailer the color details from a paint strategy. Truevision reserves the ImageType values 0 to 127 for its extremely very own use and allots values 128 to 255 for use by developers.

All Targa formats are identified by a Data Type field, which is a one byte binary integer located in byte three of the file.  The various file types specified by this field are as follows:

       0  -  No image data included.
       1  -  Uncompressed, color-mapped images.
       2  -  Uncompressed, RGB images.
       3  -  Uncompressed, black and white images.
       9  -  Runlength encoded color-mapped images.
      10  -  Runlength encoded RGB images.
      11  -  Compressed, black and white images.
      32  -  Compressed color-mapped data, using Huffman, Delta, and runlength encoding.
      33  -  Compressed color-mapped data, using Huffman, Delta, and runlength encoding. 4-pass quadtree-type process.

This document will describe only four formats: 1, 2, 9, and 10.

TGA to PDF Converter does support all type of TGA formats, you can use TGA to PDF Converter to convert TGA format to PDF file easily, please look at following screenshot, you can add a TGA image to TGA to PDF Converter product, click "Make PDF" button, then you can convert this TGA file to PDF file quickly.

The converted PDF file can be downloaded at here, you can check it by yourself. [Download]

TGA to PDF Converter can be run in Command Line window, you can run following command line to convert your TGA file to PDF file,

img2pdf -o out.pdf input.tga

You can call TGA to PDF Converter from your ASP code to convert TGA file to PDF file, for example,

<%
    dim WSH,script
    script = "C:\img2pdf.exe C:\test\test.tga C:\VeryPDF.pdf"
    Set WSH=CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
    WSH.Run(script)
    set WSH =nothing
%>

You need give enough permission to call img2pdf.exe from your ASP code.

Click here to learn more...

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