TIFF is a flexible, high-quality image format created by Aldus in 1986 for desktop publishing and scanners; Adobe now maintains the specification. It’s built around “tags” that describe the image, which lets one format cover everything from fax pages to multi-gigapixel satellite maps.
How TIFF works
A TIFF can store images uncompressed or with lossless compression (LZW or ZIP), and can even contain JPEG-compressed data. It supports high bit depths, CMYK colour for printing, layers saved by Photoshop, and multiple pages in one file, which is why scanners and fax software often produce TIFFs.
What TIFF is good at
- Archival quality. Lossless, well documented and widely supported in professional tools.
- Print and publishing. CMYK and high bit depth for accurate reproduction.
- Scanning. Multi-page documents in one file.
- Specialised imaging in mapping, medicine and science.
Where TIFF falls short
- Large files. A 300 DPI scan of an A4 page can be 25 MB or more.
- Poor web and phone support. Most browsers and many apps can’t display TIFF.
- Complexity. So many options that some TIFFs open in one program but not another.
TIFF and other formats
Convert TIFF to JPG for sharing photos and colour scans, TIFF to PNG for lossless copies of documents and graphics, and TIFF to PDF to keep multi-page scans together in a format everyone can open.