Targa (.tga) export support, please!

[bmobius]

First off, let me say that I love, LOVE Affinity Photo. Serif has made an incredible application that made moving away from PHotoshop CC so very easy.

I typically use AP for working with textures in a 3D modelling and texturing workflow. A number of other applications that I use rely heavily on the Targa (.tga) file format. With Affinity Photo, I must currently export the texture I'm working on in a file format that supports an alpha channel, import it into another application, then export it again as .TGA. Is there any way we could see a .TGA export feature soon? I know AP allows me to import targa, but I would love to be able to export it as well without having to use another app.

Please keep up that amazing work you've been doing! I can't praise you guys enough!

[thomasp]

One more voice for Targa export (with alpha channel).

[MattyWS]

There's a few topics on this aready and they said no to TARGA support being in 1.7 but now 1.7 is out I'd also like an update on this.

[Frozen Death Knight]

The more supported file formats for exporting the merrier, I say!

[drawkin]

I'm also a game dev needing TGA support with alpha for masking & hueing my 3D objects, I would like to add my voice as well!

[bmobius]

I can't help but wonder what the reason is for them not to include the Targa format. Perhaps because it is technically a proprietary format from TrueVision / Pinnacle?

I don't mind using .TIFF at all as it supports and acts very similarly to .TGA but with better compression fidelity. However, I'd just like to remove the conversion step from .TIFF to .TGA in an additional external app by having Affinity Photo export in the .TGA format.

Unrelated: The new 1.7 update is fantastic. Speed, efficiency, and optimization is glorious! 

[Patrick Connor]

Without the ability to paste into (and directly edit) the alpha channel I don't think that the majority of games creators would find it as useful an output format, as they require direct access to the 4th channel, am I wrong? (Hint I often am)

[bmobius]

On 6/14/2019 at 3:53 PM, Patrick Connor said:

Without the ability to paste into (and directly edit) the alpha channel I don't think that the majority of games creators would find it as useful an output format, as they require direct access to the 4th channel, am I wrong? (Hint I often am)

The .TGA format still has a very strong following in the game industry, especially when dealing with older game engines and their respective development environments. Additionally, there are a wide number of texture manipulation applications there have a strong emphasis on older file formats such as .tga.

You've also hit upon an important point about what I consider a glaring oversight in the way AP handles channel information. There is no direct way to paint or paste directly into a layer's alpha channel. I can only assume that customers that use AP just for photography might have no need for alpha channel manipulation.

Which brings me to my next point. Does Serif Labs have no desire to make customers out of those of us in the 3D and game development industries? If they have a number of customers asking for a particular feature that would help their work in those industries, wouldn't they benefit financially from implementing those requested features?

I have seen a number of posts in the forums requesting .TGA, .DDS, and alpha channel access. Some of those threads are quite long. I'm adding my voice to that request list. I was happy to purchase Affinity Photo when I discovered it. I will be happy to purchase version 2 when it comes out. Many of those I work with are thrilled to be using AP in their workflows. So all I can say is this:

"Serif Labs, please implement .TGA and .DDS export. Please let us manipulate our image alphas. This is a customer request. Thank you for your time and consideration."

Mind passing that along to the developers?

Thanks.

[Patrick Connor]

3 hours ago, bmobius said:

Mind passing that along to the developers?

Not at all thanks for confirming this

[bmobius]

22 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

Not at all thanks for confirming this

And thank you for letting me vent. To reiterate, I absolutely love Affinity Photo. It does almost everything I need it to do that I once used Photoshop for. Given the lack of innovative features for the subscription price that Adobe asks for, Serif Labs has knocked it out of the park with a very versatile and professional grade software at a price point that is overwhelmingly fair. For me and many others using this software in a game development production environment, the implementation of .TGA, .DDS, and alpha channel access would be the ultimate win.

Trust me when I say, I want Photoshop CC off my system as soon as possible and Affinity Photo is this close to making that a reality.

[kirk23]

As game artist myself I would say an ability to save tga in export persona would be nice indeed  but until Solidify filter( making edge padding within transparent pixels) for Photoshop would be working in AP ,   tga would still be pretty useless.     

I would save png anyway which are doing padding automatically and  then convert them into tga in Xnconvert or something.   So AP needs that free "Solidify" be compatible first or have its own working.

So ideally we need not simply  tga export   but an option to make color padding or rather un-premultiplied    tga export.

Surprisingly   a decade ago Photoshop 7 had such option for tgas for some time  but then "fixed" it because many users considered it a bug.

 

As of  alpha channel manipulation AP already have everything you need actually.  "Procedural texture" filter could  make what exact channel each and every layer or layer group would be adding to.    Just push "+" button there and it makes default zero expression  and appoint that zero to every channel you don't need to be visible.     That way you could pack any layer  to a channel it should be influencing only.  Not only alpha  just any of RGBA.  

  You still have to make grayscale values transparent before through "blend option"  curve editing dialog  since AP couldn't interpret gray-scale intensity as alpha directly

 It's all a bit too complicated  but instead of making "composite alpha" editable  I would rather want they would support alpha stacks using all available blending methods/math not only multiplying   and  "Layer Compositions"   from Photoshop so we could set and switch in between color/roughness/alpha/ normal/height  representation of a document and export them in export persona as same sized slices.

[bmobius]

3 hours ago, kirk23 said:

As game artist myself I would say an ability to save tga in export persona would be nice indeed  but until Solidify filter( making edge padding within transparent pixels) for Photoshop would be working in AP ,   tga would still be pretty useless.     

I would save png anyway which are doing padding automatically and  then convert them into tga in Xnconvert or something.   So AP needs that free "Solidify" be compatible first or have its own working.

So ideally we need not simply  tga export   but an option to make color padding or rather un-premultiplied    tga export.

Surprisingly   a decade ago Photoshop 7 had such option for tgas for some time  but then "fixed" it because many users considered it a bug.

 

As of  alpha channel manipulation AP already have everything you need actually.  "Procedural texture" filter could  make what exact channel each and every layer or layer group would be adding to.    Just push "+" button there and it makes default zero expression  and appoint that zero to every channel you don't need to be visible.     That way you could pack any layer  to a channel it should be influencing only.  Not only alpha  just any of RGBA.  

  You still have to make grayscale values transparent before through "blend option"  curve editing dialog  since AP couldn't interpret gray-scale intensity as alpha directly

 It's all a bit too complicated  but instead of making "composite alpha" editable  I would rather want they would support alpha stacks using all available blending methods/math not only multiplying   and  "Layer Compositions"   from Photoshop so we could set and switch in between color/roughness/alpha/ normal/height  representation of a document and export them in export persona as same sized slices.

I do think that the Solidify plugin from Flaming Pear (if that's the one your referencing) is a great plugin. However, most apps with texture baking such as Blender, 3DS Max, Maya, Blender, Knald, xNormal, Marmomset Toolbag, Substance Painter, and Substance Designer (just to name a few) have settings that will allow you to set pixel padding. This essentially limits the use of Solidify for most texture development to a case by case basis. So If I export a baked texture map from say Marmoset Toolbag with a pixel padding of 8 as an 8-bit .TGA, I can easily import into Photoshop CC and see the very same alpha transparency that I did in Marmoset. The alpha channel already has the dithering as expected from Marmoset export. I get a 1-to-1, WYSIWYG interoperability between both apps. That alone, let me tell you , is a significant help in the speed of my personal workflow and for others on my team. No need for a third-party plugin such as Solidify. Also, let's look at the example of transparency in dealing with such things as hair cards for character models. Obviously any file format such as .TGA that implements alpha channel transparency is perfect for hair cards. Same for feathers, fur, and cloth opacity.

It should be noted that Marmoset Tool, which I'm using here for my examples, has only 4 image export options. .PSD, .PNG, ,JPG, and (you guessed it) .TGA. Considering this is a professional piece of software, used extensively by both the 3D modeling and game dev industries, it is still limited is its export options but still makes use of .TGA for flexibility.

So let me close by saying that I believe Solidify is a fantastic plugin. For the purposes of this thread however, I am attempting to make a worthwhile case to Serif Labs for proper .TGA implementation for both import and export.

[najimcg]

+1.

Working in the video game and movie industry mainly as environment artist . 

Most of my textures need to be exported as .tga as it is still used as main texture output in a couple of engines .

I really want Adobe out of my system as fast as possible , this would be a huge win for affinity to have more export options .

 

[Patrick Connor]

More Serif input on this here

 

[Frozen Death Knight]

It seems like the devs have added TGA export support in the latest Mac Beta build. If some Mac user can confirm this is the case for us PC users, since we can't test this yet, it would be much appreciated. ^-^

 

[Brad Brighton]

58 minutes ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

It seems like the devs have added TGA export support in the latest Mac Beta build. If some Mac user can confirm this is the case for us PC users, since we can't test this yet, it would be much appreciated. ^-^

 

 

[Bhawk]

Is tga export now included in paid version? The homepage for Affinity Photo does not list it. 

[Ron P.]

1 hour ago, Bhawk said:

Is tga export now included in paid version? The homepage for Affinity Photo does not list it. 

Yes it is.