Convert TGA to PNG
Game textures and render output, in a format everything opens.
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How it works
Add your images
Drag and drop, paste, or pick files. They upload over an encrypted connection.
Pick a quality or a target size
Use the quality slider, or tell it exactly how many KB or MB you need.
Download
Save each file, or grab them all at once as a ZIP.
TGA, or Targa, dates from 1984 and is still everywhere in game development, 3D rendering and video work, because it is simple and carries an alpha channel. Outside those tools hardly anything shows it: not browsers, not image viewers on a phone, not the forum or the issue tracker where you want to post a screenshot of a texture.
PNG is the natural replacement. It is lossless like TGA, it keeps the alpha channel, and it is usually much smaller because it compresses. This page converts 8, 16, 24 and 32 bit TGA files, run-length compressed or not, and writes a PNG with the same pixels and the same transparency. Files stored bottom row first, as most are, come out the right way up.
TGA files have no signature at the start, so the file's name is how the format is recognised: keep the .tga extension. If a texture uses its alpha channel for something other than transparency, such as a roughness or height map, remember that image viewers will show those areas as see-through; the data is still there. Textures are uploaded over an encrypted connection, converted on our own servers and deleted within one hour.
Why game and render pipelines still write TGA
The format has almost no features, and that is its strength. A TGA is a short header followed by rows of pixels, optionally run-length packed, so any tool can write one in a few lines of code and any engine can load one without a library. It stores four channels at eight bits each, with nothing done to them: no colour management and no clever compression that might disturb a normal map or a mask. For source textures, that predictability matters more than file size.
The cost shows up on disk. A 2048 by 2048 texture with alpha is about 17 MB uncompressed and a 4096 one is 67 MB, more than the 20 MB allowed without an account; Pro accepts files up to 200 MB.
Dark fringes: premultiplied alpha
Renderers often write TGA files with premultiplied alpha, which means the colour of each pixel has already been darkened by its own transparency. PNG, by convention, expects the opposite: full-strength colour with the transparency stored beside it. This converter copies the channel values exactly and does not reinterpret them. A premultiplied render therefore shows dark edges around soft shapes such as smoke, hair and glows when the PNG is viewed in a browser or an image program.
Nothing has been damaged. If the PNG is going back into a compositor or an engine, tell it the alpha is premultiplied, as you did for the TGA. If it is meant for a web page or a document, render the image again with straight alpha.
Normal maps, masks and other data textures
Much of what is stored in TGA is not a picture in the ordinary sense. A normal map encodes directions as colours and looks purple and blue. A packed mask keeps roughness in one channel, metalness in the second and occlusion in the third. These come through unchanged at the page's default settings, because PNG is lossless there and no colour adjustment is applied.
Two cautions. Do not lower the quality below 90 for data textures: the colour reduction that helps ordinary graphics would corrupt the values. And do not convert them to JPG or lossy WebP for use in an engine, for the same reason. For showing a texture to someone in a chat or a bug report, any format is fine.
Frequently asked questions
Is the alpha channel kept?
Yes. A 32-bit TGA becomes a PNG with the same alpha channel.
Is anything lost in the conversion?
No. Both formats are lossless, and the pixels are copied exactly.
Why must the file be named .tga?
A TGA file carries no marker that says what it is, so the name is the only way to recognise it.
Can I convert a whole folder of textures?
Yes. Add the files as a batch and download them together as a ZIP.
Are files ending in .icb, .vda or .vst accepted?
Yes. They are older endings for the same Targa format and are read in the same way.
Can I convert a PNG back to TGA?
No. TGA is read here but not written. Most engines and 3D tools import PNG directly, so the trip back is rarely needed.