TGA to JPG Converter

What happens when you convert TGA to JPG

• The image is decoded and written as a baseline JPEG at 90 percent quality.
• JPG 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 JPG is not, so the file shrinks a lot, at the cost of some fine detail around sharp edges.

How to convert TGA to JPG 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 JPG". Images convert in a second or two each.
4. Save each JPG with its download button. Close the tab and every trace of the files is gone from memory.

Why convert TGA to JPG?

TGA files usually come from game textures, 3D rendering and video effects work. People convert them to JPG because JPG 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 JPG 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 JPG opens in every browser and image viewer.

How to convert TGA to JPG 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 JPG is saved to your Downloads folder. Paint can also re-save an image as JPG 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 JPG 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 JPG 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 JPG is saved to the Download folder, where any file manager can find it.

Best settings for TGA to JPG

JPG 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 JPG: the differences

About TGA and JPG 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 JPG file?

JPG discards fine detail the eye is least sensitive to, which is why a photo shrinks to a tenth of its raw size but text and sharp edges pick up blocky artefacts. Every re-save at a lossy setting throws away a little more.

TGA to JPG 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 JPG is always the right way up.
• Transparent areas turned white. JPG cannot store transparency; convert to PNG or WebP instead if you need it.

Convert TGA to JPG from the command line

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

magick input.tga -quality 90 output.jpg

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