The TIFF file format
TIFF or the Tagged Image File Format is a file format that is strictly used for bitmap data. TIFF files don’t contain text or vector data, even though the file format theoretically would permit additional tags to handle such data. Despite being one of the earliest file formats for images, it is still very popular today. It is a highly flexible and platform-independent format which is supported by numerous image processing applications and virtually all prepress software on the market.
The file extension for TIFF files is .tif even though .tiff is also used occasionally.
How to edit TIFF files
All professional image editing applications on the market are capable of opening TIFF files. My favorite is Adobe Photoshop.
How to convert TIFF files
There are tons of converters that can convert a TIFF file to a JPEG, PNG, EPS, PDF or other file format. Google is your friend.
- I have in the past had good experiences with GraphicConverter, a shareware tool for Macintosh that can import about 200 file types and export 80.
- For occasional file conversions I stick to Photoshop – it is not to difficult to write an action that does a batch conversion of a series of files.
- To convert a series of TIFF files to a PDF using Adobe Acrobat Professional 9: select File > Combine > Merge Files into a Single PDF. The Combine Files dialog box pops up. If you want to preserve the original image resolution, be sure to select the largest page icon that appears in the most lower right hand corner listed next to ‘File size:’.
File format specifications
As the name implies, TIFF images make use of tags, keywords defining the characteristics of the image that is included in the file. For example, a picture that contains 320 by 240 pixels would include a ‘width’ tag followed by the number ‘320′ and a ‘depth’ tag followed by the number ‘240′.
The flexibility of TIFF makes it very easy to write a TIFF-writer, but very difficult to create a fully TIFF compliant reader. The need for well defined rules has caused a few TIFF-substandards to appear. For prepress, TIFF/IT is a prime example. I have devoted a couple of of pages to this format here.
Color spaces
TIFF images can contain more or less anything:
- Line-art (pure black-and-white)
- Grayscale
- Pseudocolor, from 1-bit to 8-bit (also called palette color or indexed color in Photoshop)
- RGB
- YCbCr
- CMYK
- CIELab
For grayscale, RGB and CMYK images, 8 bits (256 levels) are used per channel but this is not a limitation of the TIFF file format. The file specifications also allow 16-bit channels. Although this feature is also supported by recent versions of Photoshop, many layout applications and drivers cannot yet support these data types.
Compression
TIFF supports a large number of compression algorithms. The lossless algorithms that can be used are:
- PackBits
- LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welch), popular for grayscale or color images (although it is not very efficient for CMYK images)
- CCITT Fax group 3 & 4, mainly used for line-art images (especially screened data coming from a RIP or copydot application).
Officially TIFF also support lossy JPEG compression. Unfortunately the specs were not worked out correctly and JPEG never gets used in TIFF files, at least not for prepress use.
File size
TIFF files cannot have more than 4 Gigabytes of raster data. However, this is 4GB of compressed data, and so if the compression ratio is high enough, theoretically a TIFF image could be much larger (in fact, 2**32-1 pixels square).
The history of TIFF
TIFF was develop as a universal image file format by Aldus (makers of PageMaker) in 1987. The most recent specifications, TIFF 6, were released in 1992. It is pointless to study older versions of the format since everybody sticks to the TIFF 6 specs. Since then, Aldus has been bought by Adobe so Adobe now holds the copyright. They have not released any new versions of TIFF which is not necessarily a bad thing since standards that last long are well supported and understood in the market.
Other sources of information
Niles Ritter maintains an unofficial TIFF home page. It covers various aspects of the file format and also points to the rather hefty TIFF 6 specifications you can download from the Adobe web site.
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When and would save out as a tiff? Does it reduce the output size?
Compared to other file formats, TIFF doesn’t use more efficient compression algorithms. It’s main advantage is that it is a trusted industry-standard file format, supported by every application.
I have been given old Quark files of a book that I would like to publish electronically, but the images are all TIFFs of the printed page (actually the film used to print the book). It is a combination of line drawings and text, kind of like captions. This is a reference book, so it must be searchable.
What is the easiest way to pull out those drawings and captions so the book would be searchable in a cell phone or ebook format?
Thanks!
Steve Ettlinger
(author)
Open the TIFFs in an application like Photoshop and crop the images in it. It is most likely easier to retype the captions than to use an OCR application to convert them to text.
One of your colleagues has given you a great graphic but it’s in the TIFF file format. Which of the following can you NOT use to convert it to a browser-friendly format?
A) Adobe Photoshop
B) Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
C) Microsoft Image Gallery
D) Adobe Fireworks
Odd question and not related to prepress – which is what this web site is all about. I’ll have to pass this question.
i need to download my pictures to dvd what do i need?
A DVD writer, a (re)writable DVD disk, a DVD burning or slideshow authoring application, 10 to 30 minutes
How can I convert Windows Word and Excel and PDF to TIFF (to submit a manuscript mainly with graphs)?
I don’t think submitting a manuscript or any multipage document as a series of TIFF images is a good idea. At a decent resolution each page easily takes up a few megabytes, even compressed. Navigating from one page or file to another is also a nightmare.
As for converting files to TIFF: If you have Acrobat Professional, you can use SAVE AS to save a PDF as a TIFF file. The Settings button in the save menu allows you to specify the resolution, color space & compression settings. For a multipage PDF, each pages is stored as a separate TIFF file.
To save Word and Excel documents as TIFF, I’d first convert them to PDF and then use the above procedure.
Hi,
I have been asked for a particular image from a friend in South Africa who wants to have it enlarged and framed,however my camera image setting in this particular case is “Large Fine” not “RAW” which gives an image size of 3072 x 2048 and a file size of 2.24 mb. Bearing in mind that the image needs to be enlarged to probably to larger than A4 size, what would you suggest is the best way to send the image in order to maintain, or enhance, the sharpness of the picture? Should I convert to TIFF, burn a CD, and send in this way? Basically, what do you think?
Looking forward to your reply.
Thanks and regards,
Ken.
Your camera produces Jpeg images, which are compressed. Resaving as TIFF will increase their file size without improving the image in any way. If you just want to send the unaltered images from the camera, I’d send the Jpegs straight from the camera’s memory card. 16-bit TIFF would make sense if you would want to send the highest possible quality processed images derived from the original RAW-data.
Hi Laurens,
Thanks very much for your speedy and helpful reply. I will send the image as you suggested. I know where to come now if I have any other queries!
Once again, thanks.
Regards,
Ken.
TIFF Files: To edit Tiff files you can convert to doc, rtf or txt formats online. Click http://www.onlinedocumentconversion.com upload your TIFF file, convert to editable format ( doc, rtf, txt ) & then edit
I have software that requires version 4 formatted tiffs, and am needing to convert version 6 tiff back to a version 4 format, is there anything out there to do this?
thanks in advance.
Since the TIFF 6 specs are by now 18 years old I think it might be a bit difficult to find software that can convert to an even older revision of the specs. I am not aware of any such tools.
This seems to have one of most popular answers at http://www.askageek.com – doing on internet w/o downloading any software, check it out – hardly costs few cents only
Hi,
I have a coloured jpeg image I need to convert to ‘bitonal black & white’ then put in .pdf. I’ve got d .pdf covered ‘cuz I have Adobe acrobat but don’t know how to convert the image. I read somewhere that tiff does bitonal? What do I do?
Open the TIFFs in an application like Photoshop and crop the images in it. It is most likely easier to retype the captions than to use an OCR application to convert them to text.