Arma PAA plugin for GIMP

Install it

Download the installer above, run it, restart GIMP. It finds your GIMP installation itself and puts the plugin where GIMP looks.

That is all — there is nothing to configure. PAA files simply open with File → Open from then on, and File → Export As offers .paa like any other format.

Check it worked

Open any .paa file. If it opens as an image, you are done. If GIMP says it does not know the format, GIMP was running during the install — restart it.

Removing it: Windows Settings → Apps, or the uninstaller in the install folder. GIMP is untouched.

What it actually does

Opens and exports PAA textures — the format Arma and DayZ use — as native GIMP file types.

• Opening handles DXT1 and DXT5 including LZO-compressed mipmaps. That matters because it is what real game textures are, and GIMP's built-in PAA support cannot read them.
• Exporting picks DXT1 or DXT5 from whether the image has an alpha channel, and generates the full mipmap chain and the AVGC, MAXC and FLAG taggs for you.

Why it exists

The alternative was round-tripping through tools that stopped being maintained a decade ago. All parsing and encoding happens in a memory-safe Rust codec rather than hand-written pointer arithmetic — which matters when the input is an untrusted file out of a workshop download.

Requirements

GIMP 3.2 or later, Windows. Image width and height must both be powers of two when exporting — that is a PAA rule, not a plugin limitation. MIT licensed.