The TGA (Truevision Graphics Adapter) file format, also known as TARGA (Truevision Advanced Raster Graphics Adapter), is a raster graphics file format originally designed for use with Truevision's video boards and later adopted as a standard for image storage. It supports various color depths, including grayscale, indexed color, and truecolor (24-bit and 32-bit). TGA files can be uncompressed or compressed using Run-Length Encoding (RLE), which makes them suitable for storing images with large areas of uniform color. The format also supports an alpha channel for transparency, allowing for image compositing. While not as widely used as formats like JPEG or PNG for web images due to its larger file sizes (especially uncompressed), TGA remains popular in professional graphics applications, video game development, and animation where lossless quality and alpha channel support are crucial. Its simplicity and straightforward structure have made it a reliable choice for storing and exchanging image data across different platforms and software.