TIFF files hold raster images in the Tagged Image File Format that Aldus began in 1986. Free software opens them in seconds. Jump to your question below, or work through it in order.
TIFF files hold raster images in the Tagged Image File Format. Aldus began the format in 1986 and Adobe now controls it. Every TIFF file stores its images behind a header and a list of tags.
What sets a TIFF file apart is choice. One file can use no compression or lossless or lossy compression. It can hold many pages and 16 bit color and CMYK. That freedom explains the size.
Free software opens TIFF files in seconds. Windows Photos and Preview on a Mac read them and so does GIMP. Section 3 lists more.
Scanners, print shops and photo libraries hand you files that end in .tif or .tiff. Most browsers refuse to show them and many of the files weigh far more than a JPEG of the same picture.
Every TIFF file holds raster images in the Tagged Image File Format. The Library of Congress format entry calls TIFF a wrapper for different bitstream encodings of bit mapped images.
Aldus first published a TIFF specification in 1986. Adobe now controls it after buying the PageMaker program from Aldus.
Two extensions cover one format. Both names open the same way in every program. The TIFF 6.0 standard recommends the short form according to the same Library of Congress entry.
TIFF files store raster images behind an eight byte header and a list of tags. The tags describe size, color and compression. Pixels sit in strips further down.
.tif and .tiffII little endian or MM big endianimage/tiffTIFFCame here for camera files? DNG files and Canon CR2 files sit on a TIFF skeleton. Section 5 shows the structure they share.
Your TIFF file is big because it keeps every pixel at full depth and can skip compression. A 24 megapixel RGB picture at 8 bits takes 72 MB before any header.
You save a scan and your TIFF file lands far larger than the JPEG you expected. Nothing is wrong with the scan.
Pixel data takes space in proportion to width times height times channels times bits per channel. Divide by eight to get bytes. A 6000 by 4000 picture holds 24,000,000 pixels.
Compression is the second lever. Without it every pixel costs its full share. The GIMP manual says the None setting is fast and lossless but files can grow huge. See the GIMP TIFF export page.
| Choice | Effect on pixel data | Example for 24 million pixels |
|---|---|---|
| 8 to 16 bits per channel | Doubles the bytes | 72 MB becomes 144 MB |
| RGB to CMYK | Adds a fourth channel | 72 MB becomes 96 MB |
| An alpha channel | Adds one more channel | 72 MB becomes 96 MB |
| More pages in the TIFF file | Adds a full image per page | Ten pages cost ten times one page |
GIMP also saves every layer as its own page when you tick Save layers. Ten layers can grow the file tenfold before compression.
The sizes in section 2 are arithmetic. They count pixel data only. Headers, tags and compression change a real file.
Open your TIFF file in Windows Photos, Preview on a Mac or GIMP. Safari also opens it. Other browsers do not, according to MDN.
Free software opens a TIFF file in seconds. Chrome and Firefox are the odd ones out when you open a TIFF file.
MDN says that other than Safari, browsers do not natively support TIFF in web content. See the MDN image type guide for the wording.
| Software | Type | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Windows Photos | Built into Windows | Wikipedia lists TIFF among the formats the app supports |
| Preview on a Mac | Built into macOS | Wikipedia lists TIFF as openable and Apple lists it as an export format |
| GIMP | Free image editor | Exports TIFF with LZW, Deflate, JPEG and more. Layers become pages |
| IrfanView | Image viewer | Lists TIF and TIFF as readable and savable with no plugin marked |
| ImageMagick | Command line tool | Lists TIFF as readable and writable, with controls for strips and tiles |
| Safari | Web browser | The one browser MDN names with native TIFF support |
Wikipedia's Photos article and its Preview article cover the first two rows. Apple's Preview guide lists TIFF as an export format.
The last rows come from the IrfanView format list and the ImageMagick format table. Microsoft also lists a native TIFF codec for Windows, which means apps built on that codec read the format too.
GIMP and ImageMagick are free programs. Windows Photos and Preview ship with the system.
Most TIFF files that fail are fine. The viewer lacks the page count or the compression or the 64 bit offsets. Open the file in a second program before you blame it.
Your TIFF file is rarely broken when it fails in one program. The viewer is missing a feature that the file uses.
Four causes cover the common failures. Test them in order, because the fixes get harder as you go.
49 49 2A 00 or 4D 4D 00 2A. A BigTIFF file shows 43 where the 42 sits.-D option also reads and decompresses all the image data.The tiffinfo page documents the tool and its options. The libtiff site hosts the full toolset.
CR2 and DNG files pass the byte test. Both sit on a TIFF skeleton. The header looks normal. Open them with a camera aware program. See CR2 and DNG.
Short files that fail every program lost bytes in transit. Download or copy the TIFF file again from the source.
Every TIFF file holds an eight byte header then a directory of 12 byte tag entries then the pixel data. The letters II or MM and the number 42 open the header.
Open the TIFF file in your hex editor and the first two letters read II or MM. Those letters start the structure that every reader follows in a TIFF file.
Three layers sit inside every TIFF file. The header points to the directory. The directory lists tags. Tags point to the pixel data.
| Bytes | Holds | What it tells the reader |
|---|---|---|
0 to 1 | II or MM | Whether numbers are little endian or big endian |
2 to 3 | The number 42 | That this file is a TIFF file |
4 to 7 | An offset | Where the first image file directory begins |
The spec calls 42 an arbitrary but carefully chosen number. In hex it reads 2A. The TIFF 6.0 specification sets II at 4949 hex and MM at 4D4D hex.
Little endian files therefore open with 49 49 2A 00 and big endian files with 4D 4D 00 2A. The Library of Congress entry prints both patterns.
Readers must handle both byte orders. That rule is why one scanner can write II and another MM and both files still open.
Here is the smallest useful example. Little endian files with the first directory right behind the header start with 49 49 2A 00 08 00 00 00. The last four bytes read 8 in little endian order.
Open any TIFF file in your hex editor and check this pattern against the table above. If bytes 2 and 3 read 2A 00 or 00 2A your TIFF file is classic. If they read 2B 00 or 00 2B your TIFF file is a BigTIFF.
An image file directory starts with a two byte count of entries. Twelve byte entries follow. A four byte offset closes the directory. It points to the next directory or holds zero when none exists.
| Bytes | Field | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
0 to 1 | Tag | Names the field, for example image width |
2 to 3 | Type | Says whether the value is a byte, short, long or other type |
4 to 7 | Count | Says how many values of that type there are |
8 to 11 | Value or offset | Holds the value when it fits in 4 bytes or points to it otherwise |
Entries must sit in ascending tag order. Readers must also ignore private fields they do not know. Both rules come from the spec and they let new tags arrive without breaking old software.
| Tag | Number | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| ImageWidth | 256 | Pixels across |
| ImageLength | 257 | Pixels down |
| BitsPerSample | 258 | Bits for every channel |
| Compression | 259 | Which scheme packed the data |
| PhotometricInterpretation | 262 | How to read the numbers as color |
| StripOffsets | 273 | Where the pixel strips start |
| NewSubfileType | 254 | What kind of image a directory describes |
| PageNumber | 297 | Page order in a multi page document |
Pixel data sits in strips. The spec advises strips of about 8K bytes, even for uncompressed data.
Your TIFF file can use no compression or LZW or PackBits or Deflate or JPEG or CCITT fax. The Compression tag, number 259, names the scheme. Only JPEG loses detail.
Compression is one tag in the TIFF file and it holds the biggest swing in file size. The choice also decides which viewers can read the file.
| Scheme | Tag value | Loses detail? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| None | 1 | No | Fast to write and files grow huge |
| CCITT fax | 2, 3, 4 | No | Black and white only. Group 3 and Group 4 need two colors |
| LZW | 5 | No | Spec section 13. Handles many bit depths |
| JPEG | 7 in libtiff | Yes | Follows a note written after the 6.0 spec |
| PackBits | 32773 | No | A simple byte oriented scheme for repeated bytes |
| Deflate | Sources differ | No | The ZIP style scheme from PNG and gzip |
The None, CCITT, LZW and PackBits rows come from the TIFF 6.0 specification. The libtiff coverage page supplies the JPEG value and the Deflate numbers.
Sources disagree on the Deflate number. Wikipedia lists 8. The libtiff coverage page lists 32946 and labels it experimental. This page states no single value.
LZW builds a table of repeated strings while it reads the data. The spec describes codes of 9 to 12 bits and strips of about 8K bytes. Wikipedia's LZW article confirms it is lossless.
PackBits is far simpler. Apple introduced it with MacPaint. A signed header byte tells the decoder to copy the next bytes as they are or to repeat one byte, per the PackBits article.
The spec carries a Unisys notice about licensing for LZW. The Library of Congress reports that the patent expired in 2003 in the U.S. and in 2004 in Europe and Japan.
Old advice to avoid LZW comes from those patent years.
Choose a lossless scheme for every scan and master TIFF file. LZW and Deflate fit photos and color art. Choose CCITT Group 4 for fax style black and white pages. The libtiff tiffcp tool offers all of these through its -c option.
Choose JPEG inside a TIFF file only when size matters more than detail. The tiffcp page lists the values. GIMP adds that JPEG is not available for indexed images.
Your TIFF file can hold many pages and 16 bit samples and CMYK. Classic files stop near 4 GB. BigTIFF raises that limit with 64 bit offsets.
One TIFF file can carry more than most formats. Pages, deep color and CMYK all fit inside the header and directory of one TIFF file.
The spec says more than one directory can sit in the TIFF file and every directory defines a subfile. The PageNumber tag marks page order. Wikipedia names multi page fax as the main use.
GIMP saves layers as pages. Its Save layers option stores every layer as a separate page, starting from the bottom. The libtiff tools split and join pages. Use tiffsplit to break a file apart and tiffcp to combine files.
Baseline TIFF lists 8 bits per channel for full color. Wikipedia adds that the SampleFormat tag in TIFF 6.0 supports integers above 8 bits and floating point images.
Scientific cameras are the example Wikipedia gives. Their sensors capture up to 16 bits per photosite and a TIFF file keeps all of them.
CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and black, the four print inks. See Wikipedia's CMYK article. The libtiff coverage page lists Separated, value 5, with four samples per pixel for this.
GIMP exports CMYK when the image has a soft proofing profile assigned. Without that profile the option stays off.
Classic TIFF files use 32 bit offsets. The spec states that the largest possible file is 2 to the 32nd power bytes. That is about 4 GB.
The libtiff BigTIFF page describes the fix. The version number in header bytes 2 and 3 changes from 42 to 43. An offset size field of 8 follows and the first directory offset grows to 8 bytes.
Tag entries grow from 12 to 20 bytes. Wikipedia reports that libtiff reached a stable BigTIFF in December 2011. It also says application support is limited.
The Library of Congress lists TIFF/IT, TIFF/EP, DNG and GeoTIFF as TIFF subtypes. Wikipedia calls GeoTIFF fully compliant with TIFF 6.0. See the GeoTIFF article.
GeoTIFF stores map coordinates inside normal TIFF files. Software that ignores the map data still opens the picture.
Wikipedia gives ISO numbers for two relatives. TIFF/EP is ISO 12234-2 and TIFF/IT is ISO 12639. Both extend TIFF 6.0.
Choose TIFF for scans, print handoff and masters. Choose JPEG for small photos you share and PNG for web graphics. Choose PSD while you edit layers in Photoshop.
Choose the format that your next step expects. TIFF began as a scanner and desktop publishing format. Websites ask for JPEG or PNG.
| Point | TIFF file | JPEG | PNG |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compression | None or lossless or lossy, by choice | Lossy, with an adjustable level | Lossless, per the W3C standard |
| Bit depth | 8 bits in baseline classes. More through SampleFormat | 12 bits in an extended part of the standard | 1 to 16 bits per sample |
| Best fit | Scans, print handoff and masters | Photos you share | Web graphics and screenshots |
Wikipedia's JPEG article supports the JPEG column and the W3C PNG specification the PNG column. Browsers show JPEG and PNG. Your TIFF file needs Safari or a converted copy.
Quality and print come first. Scans, press files and archive masters keep every pixel.
Sharing comes first. Both open in browsers and cost less storage than an uncompressed TIFF file.
BMP is the Windows bitmap. Wikipedia says BMP is normally uncompressed and offers RLE only for 4 and 8 bit images. It has no CMYK and no multiple pages. See the BMP article.
PSD files belong to Photoshop and keep layers for editing. The TIFF file can hold layers as pages too. Choose a TIFF file for handoff when the receiver names it.
TGA files serve game and video pipelines. PCX files come from old DOS paint programs. DDS files hold textures that graphics cards read directly.
Raw formats from camera makers have their own guides. See NEF for Nikon, ARW for Sony, RAF for Fujifilm and CRW for early Canon bodies.
Logos and print artwork belong in vector formats. See EPS files, AI files and PostScript files. Design apps and plotters add CDR files, PLT files and HPGL files. Pages for press arrive as PDF files instead.
Open the TIFF file in GIMP and export JPEG or PNG. ImageMagick converts folders and the libtiff tools split pages. Keep the original until the copy opens.
Convert a TIFF file to JPEG for sharing and to PNG for web graphics with clear backgrounds. Convert to PDF when you send pages to people.
ImageMagick reads and writes TIFF. One command can handle every file in a folder. Open a terminal inside the folder and enter this command.
magick mogrify -format png *.tif
PNG copies appear beside the TIFF originals and the originals stay as they are. Try the command on copies before the real folder.
The libtiff toolset handles TIFF to TIFF work. Use tiffsplit src.tif to split a multi page file. It names the pages xaaa.tif and xaab.tif by default.
Use tiffcp -c lzw in.tif out.tif to recompress with LZW. The libtiff site lists a tiff2pdf tool for PDF output. See PDF documents for what the result holds.
GIMP groups its TIFF choices into compression, layers, color and metadata. Save color profile keeps the profile with the picture. Save Exif data, Save IPTC data and Save XMP data keep the metadata that came with it.
Save color values from transparent pixels keeps color even in fully clear areas. Crop layers resizes layers to the image size because TIFF cannot store negative offsets. All of these come from the GIMP export page.
Layers need a different target. Save Photoshop PSD files from an editor if you plan to keep editing.
Yes. Libraries trust TIFF for masters of scanned images. Keep the TIFF file as the master and share smaller copies.
Your TIFF file earns its place in archives.
The Library of Congress rates TIFF fully documented and says particular subtypes are widely deployed as master formats for scanned images. Library and Archives Canada recommends it for still images.
Preservation groups also track subtypes. The Library of Congress says the FLVC table gives particular TIFF subtypes high preservation confidence. Check which subtype your TIFF file uses.
The Library of Congress also flags two weak spots. The registry of tag extensions is not available from Adobe. The 6.0 revision dates from 1992 and the Library of Congress still calls it the most recent version.
Choose one lossless recipe and stay with it. Avoid lossy JPEG inside a master.
It is the master. Scans, press files and film transfers should stay lossless.
It only feeds a website. A JPEG or PNG copy costs less and opens everywhere.
tiffinfo file.tif to print the tags of every page.-D option so tiffinfo reads and decompresses all the image data.Unsure what a stray extension means? Read what a file format is first.
The TIFF file format is the Aldus and Adobe Revision 6.0 layout from June 1992, with an 8 byte header and 12 byte directory entries. The media type is image/tiff.
Numbers in this section trace back to the TIFF 6.0 specification or to a record named beside them.
.tif and .tiffTIFFimage/tiff, RFC 230249 49 2A 004D 4D 00 2A| Number | Type | Number | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
1 | BYTE | 7 | UNDEFINED |
2 | ASCII | 8 | SSHORT |
3 | SHORT | 9 | SLONG |
4 | LONG | 10 | SRATIONAL |
5 | RATIONAL | 11 | FLOAT |
6 | SBYTE | 12 | DOUBLE |
Read the first four bytes. 49 49 2A 00 and 4D 4D 00 2A mark a classic TIFF file. 49 49 2B 00 and 4D 4D 00 2B mark a BigTIFF file, because 43 is 2B in hex.
Camera raw files like CR2 and DNG start with the same bytes. Check the extension and the size too before you call it a plain TIFF file or a camera file.
The spec lists four Baseline image types. They are bilevel, grayscale, palette color and full color. Features marked not recommended for general data interchange count as extensions.
Files that use extensions are called Extended TIFF 6.0 files. Wikipedia describes the 6.0 split between required and optional parts the same way.
TIFF is not always uncompressed. It carries six compression families and only one is the absence of compression.
TIFF is not one fixed format either. The Library of Congress lists subtypes for scanning, photography and mapping. Classic TIFF is capped at 4 GB and BigTIFF is not.
Sources also disagree on the month of Revision 5.0 and on the Deflate value. This page gives the year 1988 and no Deflate number.
The specification supplies the header, directory and tag numbers. The Library of Congress supplies the history, signatures and preservation view. Wikipedia's Library of Congress article covers the institution.
Wikipedia covers the history and extension formats. The format index links every FileFix guide. Browse the what is hub for neighboring topics. Wikipedia's TIFF article is the general reference.
Check the structure. Section 5 shows how to read the header and the tags.
Test it in a second program. Section 4 sorts file faults from viewer faults.
Did your TIFF file come from your camera and not from your scanner? Read the DNG guide or the CR2 guide for raw files that sit on a TIFF skeleton.
Do you want layers and not pages? The PSD guide explains the Photoshop format and how it differs.
Does your printer want something other than raster files? The PDF guide covers press pages and the EPS guide covers vector art.
Does a game or video tool want another bitmap? See the TGA guide and the PCX guide for two older raster formats.
Does the trouble sit with your computer and not the picture? Browse the Windows fixes or the Mac fixes by the message on screen.
Still unsure what an extension means? Send us the file details and we will look at it.