DDS to JPG Converter

Q: What color do transparent parts of the texture turn into?

Whatever you pick under **Transparent areas**: white by default, black, or a custom hex color. For foliage, hair cards and decals, a mid-gray or black usually reads better than white in a preview.

Q: Can I make the JPG smaller for a forum with an upload cap?

Set **Resize output image** to a longest side such as 1024 px, or lower **Quality** to around 80. A full 4K texture as JPG is large; a 1024 px preview is plenty for a screenshot thread.

Browsers, chat apps and phones cannot show a .dds texture. Convert it to JPG and the same texture becomes a preview you can post on a mod page, paste into a bug report or drop into a style guide.

or drop JPG, JPEG, JPE … files here ·

Max 95 MB per file· Up to 20 files· Deleted after 30 minutes

Output

Convert to

Files are processed on our servers and deleted after 30 minutes.

How to use this tool

1
Add the DDS textures
Drop up to 20 .dds files, 95 MB each, straight from the game's extracted texture folder or your mod project.
2
Choose the background for alpha
JPG cannot store transparency. Under Advanced settings, Transparent areas fills it with white by default; pick black or a custom color for dark game art.
3
Convert to JPG
Press Convert to JPG and download each preview, or one ZIP for the set.

DirectDraw Surface arrived with DirectX 7 in 1999 as a way to hand textures to the graphics card in the layout it reads directly. That is why games from Skyrim to Microsoft Flight Simulator ship thousands of them, and why almost nothing else opens them. Windows Photos, every web browser, Discord, Slack and the upload forms on most mod hosting sites expect JPG, PNG or WebP.

A JPG copy is the simplest way to show a texture to people. It is small enough to post, opens on any phone, and suits diffuse and albedo maps well, since those are color pictures to begin with. If you need transparency to survive, for a sprite sheet or a decal preview, go to DDS to PNG instead; for everything that is a plain colored surface, JPG is lighter.

Which DDS formats carry alpha, and what reaches the JPG

from ↓ · to →	Color	Alpha	Color in JPG	Alpha in JPG
BC1 / DXT1	BC1 / DXT1 to Color: yes	BC1 / DXT1 to Alpha: yes	BC1 / DXT1 to Color in JPG: yes	– BC1 / DXT1 to Alpha in JPG: no
BC3 / DXT5	BC3 / DXT5 to Color: yes	BC3 / DXT5 to Alpha: yes	BC3 / DXT5 to Color in JPG: yes	– BC3 / DXT5 to Alpha in JPG: no
BC5 / ATI2	BC5 / ATI2 to Color: yes	– BC5 / ATI2 to Alpha: no	BC5 / ATI2 to Color in JPG: yes	– BC5 / ATI2 to Alpha in JPG: no
BC7	BC7 to Color: yes	BC7 to Alpha: yes	BC7 to Color in JPG: yes	– BC7 to Alpha in JPG: no
Uncompressed RGBA	Uncompressed RGBA to Color: yes	Uncompressed RGBA to Alpha: yes	Uncompressed RGBA to Color in JPG: yes	– Uncompressed RGBA to Alpha in JPG: no

supported not offeredBC1 stores at most a 1-bit cut-out alpha; BC3, BC7 and uncompressed RGBA store smooth 8-bit alpha. BC5 holds two channels, usually a normal map. JPG keeps color only.

DDS

DirectDraw Surface

DDS is a Microsoft texture format introduced with DirectX 7 in 1999. It stores images in GPU-ready block compression schemes such as DXT/BCn, along with mipmaps and cube maps, so graphics cards can use them without decoding. Block compression is lossy and can show artefacts in gradients, though uncompressed DDS also exists. It is common in PC games and game mods but unsupported by browsers and most everyday image viewers.

Compression: Lossy or lossless
Transparency: Yes
Animation: No
Introduced: 1999 · Microsoft

DDS converter

JPG

JPEG image

JPEG (or JPG) is the most widely used photo format, standardised by the Joint Photographic Experts Group in 1992. It uses lossy compression that discards fine detail the eye is unlikely to notice, which keeps photos small enough for the web, email and phone storage. It handles smooth gradients and natural scenes well, but sharp text, line art and flat colours pick up visible blocky or fuzzy artefacts. JPEG has no transparency and no animation, and every re-save loses a little more quality. Every browser, phone, camera and image editor can open it.

Compression: Lossy
Transparency: No
Animation: No
Introduced: 1992 · Joint Photographic Experts Group

JPG converter

Modders and game artists convert DDS to JPG to show a texture where only ordinary photos are accepted, a mod page gallery, a chat message or a wiki, when keeping its alpha does not matter.

Alpha and mipmaps: what the JPG leaves out

Before you convert

Only the top mip level is exported, at the texture's full size.
Alpha, whether transparency or a packed mask, is replaced by the background color.
Block compression artifacts already in the DDS stay visible in the JPG.
Normal maps stay blue-purple images; they are data, not a picture of the surface.

Game textures use the alpha channel for more than see-through areas. Many engines pack a specular, gloss or height mask into it, because a spare channel costs nothing on the GPU. JPG has no fourth channel, so that information is simply not exported. The color you choose under Transparent areas only matters where the alpha meant transparency; on a texture whose alpha is a mask, the JPG shows the plain color layer.

Mipmaps are the half-size, quarter-size and smaller copies a DDS stores after the main image so distant surfaces render cleanly. A preview needs only the largest one, which is what you get. Textures with sides of 4096 px or more make heavy JPGs; set Resize output image to a longest side of 1024 or 2048 px for posting.

If you edit the JPG and want it back in a game, remember that JPG adds its own compression on top of the DDS block compression. For a round trip, edit from a PNG and re-encode once at the end.

DDS to JPG questions

Why do I need a JPG of a DDS texture at all?

Mod pages, forums, Discord, wikis and issue trackers display JPG and PNG but not DDS. A JPG preview lets players see a retexture before downloading it and lets teammates review an asset without installing a texture plugin.

What color do transparent parts of the texture turn into?

Whatever you pick under Transparent areas: white by default, black, or a custom hex color. For foliage, hair cards and decals, a mid-gray or black usually reads better than white in a preview.

Which mip level ends up in the JPG?

The full-resolution top level, the image the game shows up close. The smaller copies stored after it are not exported, so a 2048 × 2048 texture becomes one 2048 × 2048 JPG.

My texture's alpha holds a gloss mask, not transparency. Is it lost?

In the JPG, yes; JPG has three color channels and nothing more. Keep the original DDS for the game, and if you need to see the mask as its own picture, open the file in a texture tool that can display single channels.

Can I make the JPG smaller for a forum with an upload cap?

Set Resize output image to a longest side such as 1024 px, or lower Quality to around 80. A full 4K texture as JPG is large; a 1024 px preview is plenty for a screenshot thread.

Can I put a JPG back into the game?

Not directly. Most engines that read DDS expect it on disk, so the edited picture has to go back through a DDS encoder; JPG to DDS does that step.