About this tool
Extracting a texture from a game for editing usually means turning DDS into something an image editor understands, and TGA is the format most texture tools were built around. The DDS is decompressed (BC1 to BC7 and uncompressed layouts) and saved as a 32-bit TGA with the alpha channel intact.
About the formats: DDS (DirectDraw Surface) is the texture format game engines and modding tools use: Skyrim, Fallout, GTA, Unity, Unreal, and countless others. It stores GPU-ready, block-compressed pixels (DXT1/DXT5/BC7) together with a mipmap chain, which is exactly why ordinary image viewers and editors cannot open it without a plugin. TGA (Truevision Targa) is a simple, lossless image format from the 1980s that game engines and 3D tools never stopped using: Unity, Unreal, Source, Blender, and countless modding pipelines accept it, and it stores an alpha channel without the premultiplication surprises of other formats. Web browsers and most viewers cannot open it.
DDS and TGA, side by side
| .dds in | .tga out | |
|---|---|---|
| Compression | BC1 to BC7, or none | None or RLE (lossless) |
| Transparency | Yes (BC3, BC7, RGBA) | Yes, 8-bit alpha |
| Mipmaps | Yes | No |
| Used by | Game engines, modding | Unity, Unreal, Source, Blender |
Rows where the two differ are marked. The full story on each: DDS files and TGA files.
How to use it
- Drop your DDS files into the box above, or click to browse. Nothing is uploaded.
- Adjust the options if you want; the defaults suit most files.
- Click Convert to TGA and wait a moment.
- Download the results individually or all at once as a ZIP.
Questions
Is anything lost converting DDS to TGA?
Nothing beyond what the DDS compression already discarded. TGA stores the decoded pixels losslessly.
Which DDS formats can be opened?
DXT1, DXT3, DXT5 (BC1-BC3), ATI1/ATI2 (BC4/BC5), BC6H, BC7, and the common uncompressed layouts such as 32-bit BGRA/RGBA. Both classic and DX10-header DDS files work.
What about mipmaps, cubemaps, and texture arrays?
The full-size base level is converted. For cubemaps and arrays, the first face or layer is used.
Why does the transparency or color look strange?
Games often store non-color data in textures: specular or roughness in the alpha channel, or two-channel normal maps (BC5) that appear red and green. The conversion is correct; the texture simply was not a picture in the usual sense.
Is it free, are files uploaded, which browsers work: the general questions are answered once for the whole site.