Why this exists
GIMP 3 technically ships with PAA support — but it can’t decode DXT1/DXT5, the compression used by virtually every real Arma and DayZ texture, it can’t export PAA at all, and it carries an unpatched security vulnerability (CVE-2026-6695) that a maliciously crafted PAA file can trigger just by being opened. The community plugin everyone used before that was built for GIMP 2.10 and last updated in 2021.
This plugin replaces both: full load and export support for the .paa files you actually work with, on current GIMP 3.2.
Open PAA files in GIMP — and export them back
- Opens real game textures — DXT1 and DXT5 PAA files, including LZO-compressed mipmaps. Colour maps, normal maps, specular maps, the lot.
- Exports back to PAA — DXT1 or DXT5 chosen automatically based on transparency, with the full mipmap chain and taggs (average colour and friends) generated for you. Verified against Bohemia’s own TexView.
- Fits your workflow — open a .paa, edit, export. Or convert a PNG to PAA: open the PNG and export as .paa. Non-square textures are fine; each side just needs to be a power of two (512×256 flags welcome — that’s the PAA format’s rule, not ours).
Built safer, on purpose
Every previous PAA tool for GIMP parsed attacker-controllable image data in C++ — that’s where the CVE came from. This plugin does all PAA parsing and encoding in memory-safe Rust, has been fuzz-tested against thousands of deliberately corrupted files, and turns malformed input into a clean error message instead of a crash — or worse. The installer can also optionally disable GIMP’s vulnerable built-in PAA plugin (and restores it if you uninstall).
Installation
Run the installer, pick “just me” (no admin needed) or “all users”, done — the plugin appears in GIMP the next time it starts. Everything is code-signed. Uninstall cleanly from Windows Settings whenever you like.
Free and open licensed (MIT). Built by the creator of Zumbai Client and TT DayZ mods.