.ASTC File Extension
Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression File
| Developer | Arm Holdings and AMD |
| Popularity |
2.0 | 1 Vote |
What is an ASTC file?
An ASTC file is a texture file compressed with Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC), a lossy graphics compression standard designed to reduce image size while preserving visual quality. It is commonly used in 3D graphics, video games, and mobile applications where efficient memory usage is important. Instead of storing a full uncompressed texture, the format compresses image data into small blocks that supported graphics hardware can decode in real time.
More Information
ASTC files are widely used in game development and real-time rendering systems to store compressed texture data for modern GPUs and mobile devices. The format was developed with support from Arm Holdings and is supported by many modern graphics processors and mobile chipsets.
Game engines and graphics tools often generate ASTC textures during the asset build process to improve performance and reduce storage requirements. Developers commonly use ASTC textures in engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine, especially for Android and other mobile platforms.
How to open an ASTC file
You can open ASTC files with PVRTexTool, which can visually preview ASTC textures. In macOS, Apple Preview can also open ASTC files.
Arm ASTC Encoder (astcenc) can open ASTC files by decoding them back into standard image formats, but it is primarily a command-line tool used for encoding and decoding textures rather than interactive viewing. Google astc-codec is a reference decoding library that enables software to read and display ASTC data, but it is designed for integration into applications rather than direct file viewing.
How to convert an ASTC file
Arm ASTC Encoder (astcenc) and Apple Preview can convert ASTC files to other image formats. For example, Arm ASTC Encoder (astcenc) can convert ASTC files to the following formats: