What is the use of the DXTex tool provided with DirectX?

The DXTex tool allows DXSDK users to easily create texture maps that use the new DXTn compression formats. Creating a DXTn-compressed texture can be done through DirectDraw's Blt function. Advanced developers will probably want to write their own tools that meet their specific needs. But this tool provides useful basic functionality. It can be found inside the Bin/DXUtils folder of DXSDK.

Its functionality includes

1. Opens BMP and DDS files (As this native file format encapsulates the information in a DirectDrawSurface it is called DirectDrawSurface files.)
2. Opens BMP files as alpha channel, either explicitly or implicitly. (Alpha channel provides opacity information at each pixel.)
3. Saves textures in DDS format
4. Supports conversion to all five DXTn compression formats
5. Supports generation of mipmaps using a box filter. (Mipmapping is a technique that improves image quality by providing prefiltered versions of the texture image at multiple resolutions. But it will consume more memory for storing this multiple maps)
6. Supports visualization of alpha channel as a grayscale image or via a user selectable background color
7. Supports easy visual comparison of image quality between formats

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