DDS (DirectDraw Surface)

The DDS file format was introduced by Microsoft in 1999 and intended to be its standard image format for the DirectX 7 3D graphics API. The format is used to store textures for use within 3D graphics and game environments and can be compressed or uncompressed.

The compression algorithm used by DDS was the previously proprietary S3 texture compression, which could reduce the image file size and was easy for the GPU to decompress in real-time. The format is still used, and there are some third-party image editors that are compatible with it.