TGA sucks, what were they thinking?

[Omega124]

Seriously, I can't belive what they were thinking when they decided to use TGA pictures without at least putting it on the clipboard. I mean, it is virtually impossible to upload images for AARS, as no major uploader supports it. Even converting it to an acceptable form seems to be unacceptable unless you're willing to pay for a third party converter, as first-hand searching shows.

Why do you have to inconvience us so? Is it so much to ask to put it on the clipboard, possibly even with the TGA that you are so interested in?

 

[ezwip]

First hand searching left me clueless what you are talking about and I can't resist asking. Can someone translate this for me?

 

[Sonereal]

First hand searching left me clueless what you are talking about and I can't resist asking. Can someone translate this for me?

In Civ4, screenshots were saved in PNGs which were probably smaller, and actually usable. In CiV, you get clunky TGAs which no one from Tinypic to Imageshack will take and they're bulky as hell.

 

[Putmalk]

When you Print Screen, images come out as a .tga file.

You must use a converter on the internet to convert it to .jpg.

There are free ones that exist. I have found some that are useful. Just look harder.

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

As a Photoshop user this isn't a problem for me.

However, the time spent converting the images does seem rather pointless...

 

[ezwip]

That's what I was using and hadn't really noticed that it's some crazy TGA file. I see it now.

 

[Sonereal]

It would help if there was some reason why screenshots were saved in a format nobody in the civilized world can use.

 

[John-SJ]

http://www.faststone.org/

Freeware. Works for me.

 

[AlpsStranger]

Use the GIMP

Although I do agree it was an unfortunate choice of format.

 

[Callonia]

Step 1: Prnt screen

Step 2: Open up the tga file

Step 3: Alt+Prnt Screen

Step 4: Paste into paint program

Step 5: Save Paint.

Now you have a jpg file.

 

[AlpsStranger]

Step 1: Prnt screen

Step 2: Open up the tga file

Step 3: Alt+Prnt Screen

Step 4: Paste into paint program

Step 5: Save Paint.

Now you have a jpg file.

I think that might be the problem some people are having chief.

 

[Omega124]

Execpt that doesn't work, Callonia. They speficlly hardcoded it so that it doesn't show up on the clipboard. Instead, all you get is a black box.

EDIT: Besides, PNG is superior to JPG in almost everyway. JPG is better for photographs than PNG is, and PNG can't animate, but besides that, PNG outclasses every other file type that is commonly used.

 

[Hormagaunt]

Even converting it to an acceptable form seems to be unacceptable unless you're willing to pay for a third party converter, as first-hand searching shows.

You needn't buy a third-party converter. Go find Gimp. It's a free open-source image editor. It will handle Targa (TGA) files with no problem and you can Save As to many different formats.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I use a program called IrfanView. It's free and does the job well enough.

Seems very convenient for this purpose too, as you can scroll through images in the screenshots folder using the left-right arrow keys, and the hotkey for "save as" is just "s". Saves as jpeg (or other formats) with a number of options that can be customised like compression quality etc.

There might be better alternatives out there, but this program does everything I need it to do.

Execpt that doesn't work, Callonia. They speficlly hardcoded it so that it doesn't show up on the clipboard. Instead, all you get is a black box.

EDIT: Besides, PNG is superior to JPG in almost everyway. JPG is better for photographs than PNG is, and PNG can't animate, but besides that, PNG outclasses every other file type that is commonly used.

By the way, I'm pretty sure paint in each version of windows allows you to save as png as well.

 

[lschnarch]

Well, we all know *that* we can do something to change .tga to .jpg.

The question is, why was .tga chosen for a very "accessible" game? Why do I have to manually (or even batched) convert a screenshot?

Taking screenshots in many, if not most cases is to share with others. Why making this more tedious than necessary?

For me, this is just another indication for what I suspect: "We, Firaxis by the grace of God, know *better*"

 

[Renergy]

1) Press PrintScreen
2) Paste to GIMP (Ctrl+V)
3) Save to whatever format you like

That's what I've done when I wanted a screenshot. No "black screens", it just works (for me at least).

 

[John-SJ]

1) Press PrintScreen
2) Paste to GIMP (Ctrl+V)
3) Save to whatever format you like

That's what I've done when I wanted a screenshot. No "black screens", it just works (for me at least).

Aha! Thanks! The same thing works with Fast Stone. I've been saving the tga and then opening with FS and re-saving. This will be much quicker.

 

[charon2112]

I just use FRAPS for all screenshots.

 

[Maniacal]

I second Infranview for this, I have no idea why the hell they thought .tga was a good idea for screenshots though.

However FRAPS or X-Fire or some other screenshot taker would work quite well for this.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Well, we all know *that* we can do something to change .tga to .jpg.

The question is, why was .tga chosen for a very "accessible" game? Why do I have to manually (or even batched) convert a screenshot?

Taking screenshots in many, if not most cases is to share with others. Why making this more tedious than necessary?

For me, this is just another indication for what I suspect: "We, Firaxis by the grace of God, know *better*"

I'm no expert on this, but I get the impression that the screenshots are saved with lossless compression (so they're really nice to look at). Maybe it's a fairly fast format for saving high-res lossless images? (EDIT... As far as I can tell, there's pretty much no compression at all - it's more or less a raw output format)

The one thing I like about it is that there is at least the option now to have the full quality screenshot and then compress afterwards. In civ4 it was the complete reverse. The screenshots were saved as lossy jpegs, and if you wanted the lossless compressed images you had to use the clipboard data and paste into paint or some such.

For example, have a look at the difference in quality of the coloured text in the following images. The first was cropped from a screenshot in the screenshot folder (actually it's 3 pictures combined but we can ignore that). The second was pasted manually from the clipboard data and saved as a nice PNG image.

Spoiler :

Finally I would say that not saving images as a common format like jpeg does make it a fair bit less user friendly though. It's an important point.