TGA to JPEG Converter

What happens when you convert TGA to JPEG

• The image is decoded and written as a baseline JPEG at 90 percent quality.
• JPEG has no transparency, so transparent areas are filled with white.
• Browsers cannot read TGA, so this page includes its own TGA reader. It handles uncompressed and run-length compressed files at 8, 16, 24 and 32 bits, and keeps the alpha channel.
• TGA is lossless and JPEG is not, so the file shrinks a lot, at the cost of some fine detail around sharp edges.

How to convert TGA to JPEG online

1. Press "Choose TGA files" and select one or more files, or drag them onto the box. You can add files of any size your device can hold in memory.
2. Adjust the settings if you need to. Lower quality gives a smaller file.
3. Press "Convert to JPEG". Images convert in a second or two each.
4. Save each JPEG with its download button. Close the tab and every trace of the files is gone from memory.

Why convert TGA to JPEG?

TGA files usually come from game textures, 3D rendering and video effects work. People convert them to JPEG because JPEG opens everywhere and keeps photos small, which is why upload forms and email favour it.

In short, TGA is good at what it was made for, and JPEG is the more practical choice when the file has to open, upload or print somewhere else. TGA does not open in browsers; Photoshop, GIMP and game engines read it, while JPEG opens in every browser and image viewer.

How to convert TGA to JPEG on Windows, Mac, iPhone and Android

On Windows

Open this page in Chrome, Edge or Firefox, drag your TGA files in from File Explorer, and press Convert. Each JPEG is saved to your Downloads folder. Paint can also re-save an image as JPEG with Save as, provided Windows can open the TGA in the first place.

On a Mac

Safari, Chrome and Firefox all work. Drag the TGA files from Finder onto the drop zone and the JPEG files land in Downloads. Preview can do single images too: open the file, choose File, then Export, and pick JPEG.

On iPhone and iPad

Open the page in Safari and tap Choose TGA files. You can pick from Photos or from the Files app. The converted JPEG appears in Files, in the Downloads folder; to put it in your photo library, open it there, tap Share and choose Save Image.

On Android

Open the page in Chrome, tap Choose TGA files and pick them from Files or your gallery. The JPEG is saved to the Download folder, where any file manager can find it.

Best settings for TGA to JPEG

JPEG is lossy, so the Quality setting trades file size against detail. Best is 95, High is 90, Medium is 80 and Small file is 65 on the usual 0 to 100 scale. At High the difference from the TGA is invisible for photos; at Small file you may see softness around text and fine patterns.

The Maximum width setting shrinks large images before encoding. A 4000 pixel phone photo reduced to 1920 pixels loses three quarters of its pixels and most of its size, yet still fills a laptop screen.

TGA vs JPEG: the differences

About TGA and JPEG files

What is a TGA file?

TGA, also called Targa, stores pixels uncompressed or with simple run-length compression, plus an alpha channel. Its simplicity is why game engines and 3D tools still use it for textures decades after it was created.

What is a JPEG file?

JPEG and JPG are the same format. The three-letter extension dates from old Windows systems that only allowed three characters after the dot, and both names are still in use.

TGA to JPEG not working? Common problems

• Colours look slightly different. Browsers convert images to the standard sRGB colour space when they decode them, so wide-gamut and CMYK images can shift a little.
• A phone photo comes out upright even though it looked sideways elsewhere. That is correct: the rotation stored in the photo is applied during conversion, so the JPEG is always the right way up.
• Transparent areas turned white. JPEG cannot store transparency; convert to PNG or WebP instead if you need it.

Convert TGA to JPEG from the command line

If you work in a terminal, ImageMagick converts TGA to JPEG in one line:

magick input.tga -quality 90 output.jpeg

To convert every TGA in a folder at once, use magick mogrify -format jpeg *.tga. The converter on this page does the same job without installing anything.