I recently rediscovered the virtues of certain Amiga file formats, but Ernie Smith has me beat when it comes to format archeology: 10 forgotten image formats.
Originally developed by AT&T and spun off into its own company in the late 1980s, TGA was one of the first file formats capable of "true color" with the help of its hardware-based image-processing tools. As the Library of Congress notes, it was even capable of transparency effects, a big deal for its time. "Truevision went on to pioneer the desktop digital video editing industry with the introduction of the Targa videographics card in 1987 that would run in a PC," the IEEE Computer Society wrote of Truevision's efforts. "In that same year, NewTek announced its Amiga-based video capture board, the Video Toaster, but didn't actually release it until 1990, so Targa truly was the first."
Putting TIFF in there is some good print/imaging nerd trolling.
