Previeving anf searching trough RGB and alpha channels

[kirk]

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

[Mario]

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?

[kirk]

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

[Mario]

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).

As 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 (with a link back to this thread, I get a lot of emails every day).