About TIFF Files

TIFF Image

Released 1986 By Aldus Corporation (later Adobe)

TIFF is a flexible, high-quality image format widely used in publishing, printing, and professional photography. It supports multiple compression methods and color spaces including CMYK.

Family

Raster & Vector Images

Extension

.tiff

MIME Type

image/tiff

Can Use As

Input Output

The story

HOW TIFF
CAME TO BE.

1986

1994

TIFF — Tagged Image File Format — was created in 1986 by Aldus, the company behind PageMaker, as a universal interchange format for the then-brand-new world of desktop scanners. Each scanner vendor had its own proprietary format, and publishers wanted one file type that would accept them all. TIFF's trick was its name: every piece of data is a numbered "tag" (tag 256 = image width, tag 257 = image height, tag 259 = compression), and readers simply ignore tags they don't understand.

Adobe acquired Aldus in 1994 and maintained TIFF as the de-facto master format for high-end print, archival, and scientific imaging. Three decades later TIFF still powers museum digitization projects, satellite imagery archives, and medical imaging workflows. It’s the image format that refused to die because it was designed to absorb any feature that came along.

CURIOSITIES &
TRIVIA.

TIFF's tag system was so extensible that GeoTIFF (for satellite imagery) and BigTIFF (for files over 4 GB) were added decades later without breaking old readers.

A TIFF can contain multiple images in a single file — useful for multi-page scanned documents and faxes.

The format supports over 50 different compression schemes, including CCITT Group 4 (fax), JPEG, LZW, Deflate, and completely uncompressed.

LZW compression in TIFF was briefly controversial due to Unisys patent claims in the 1990s — the same patent that haunted GIF.

NASA, the Library of Congress, and most national archives mandate TIFF for long-term preservation of scanned documents.

STRENGTHS &
LIMITATIONS.

Strengths

Lossless by default — no generation loss on successive edits and saves.
Supports any bit depth (1 to 32 bits per channel), any color model, any number of channels.
Extensible tag system means vendor-specific data survives alongside standard tags.
Multi-page containers are perfect for scanned documents, faxes, and DICOM-like stacks.
Industry-standard for archival, museums, scientific imaging, and high-end print prepress.

Limitations

File sizes are huge compared to JPEG/WebP/AVIF — often 10-30× larger.
Not a web format — no browser displays TIFF natively.
Ambiguous spec areas mean some TIFFs only open correctly in the tool that created them.
Weak animation support — designed for still imagery.

Typical Sizes & Weights

Scanned A4 page (300 dpi, B&W)

100-300 KB

Scanned A4 page (600 dpi, color)

15-40 MB

Print-quality magazine photo

30-150 MB

Satellite GeoTIFF tile

50 MB - 5 GB

Technical Specifications

MIME type: image/tiff
Extensions: .tif, .tiff
Standard: TIFF 6.0 (1992); BigTIFF extension for 64-bit offsets
Max file size: 4 GB (TIFF); 2^64 bytes (BigTIFF)
Compression options: None, LZW, Deflate, JPEG, CCITT G3/G4, PackBits, JBIG

CONVERT FROM
TIFF

tiff jpg tiff png tiff webp tiff avif tiff gif tiff bmp tiff ico tiff svg tiff psd tiff eps tiff pdf tiff tga tiff exr tiff pcx tiff sgi tiff dpx tiff pnm tiff xbm tiff xpm tiff wbmp tiff miff

CONVERT TO
TIFF

jpg tiff png tiff cr2 tiff nef tiff dng tiff psd tiff jpeg tiff webp tiff avif tiff gif tiff bmp tiff ico tiff svg tiff heic tiff heif tiff jxl tiff jp2 tiff eps tiff jfif tiff pgm tiff ppm tiff pbm tiff tga tiff exr tiff hdr tiff xcf tiff emf tiff wmf tiff arw tiff orf tiff rw2 tiff cr3 tiff raf tiff sr2 tiff pef tiff icns tiff svgz tiff dds tiff pdf tiff pcx tiff sgi tiff dpx tiff pnm tiff xbm tiff xpm tiff fits tiff wbmp tiff cin tiff miff tiff raw tiff ai tiff indd tiff cdr tiff doc tiff docx tiff odt tiff rtf tiff xls tiff xlsx tiff ods tiff ppt tiff pptx tiff odp tiff

Common Use Cases

Print production, professional photography, document scanning, archival storage.