I work for gamedev and our texture files are usually packed TGAs with each of RGBA is sometimes unrelated black and white images visually .
Would be nice to have a special visually similar search option in each channel separately, thumbnail indication of alpha channel/ channels in use and a way to quickly scroll through RGBA channels in thumbnail preview. Like R- showing black and white red channel of all images , G -green. etc
Like in DJV previewer
This sounds quite special. Something one would more expect from software like Blender or specialized tools like the DJV previewer you mention.
I have no idea how such a TGA looks and IMatch can only manage one visual fingerprint per file (for similarity and dupe search) anyway. Adding this FR would require some substantial changes and modifications to the data model. Doable, but expensive in developer time. My guess is that the market for this is quite small: 1 + n persons?
Maybe not search but rather thumbnails/preview only showing red, green, blue, alpha with a quick RGBA hotkey switch. It's probably just on screen rendering, kind of post-process without changing anything in database or software core itself.
As of the market , CG is not that small. It's not only gamedev
IMatch stores thumbnails as JPEG for and efficiency reasons. Cache images too.
Doing the "show individual channels" would mean that IMatch needs to load the original TGA file and then use that instead of the thumbnail. And dealing with off-line files etc.
As I said, doable but time-consuming (aka expensive).
QuoteAs of the market , CG is not that small. It's not only gamedev
I know. I use Blender myself and worked with other 3D packages in the past.
But how many 3D and game devs will purchase IMatch just because it offers the RGBA channel display for TGA files? I have no idea.
I'm sure there is a plug-in for Blender which does this, if this is often needed or helpful.
As always, I'm open. If a number of users wants this and +1's your request, I will look into it for one of the next releases.
If possible, attach a sample TGA file or send one to support email address (https://www.photools.com/support/) (with a link back to this thread, I get a lot of emails every day).