TIFF

File Format
Name	TIFF
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Graphics TIFF
Extension(s)	.tiff, .tif
MIME Type(s)	image/tiff
LoCFDD	fdd000022
PRONOM	fmt/353

TIFF, formerly known as Tag(ged) Image File Format, is an image format capable of storing multiple high quality images in a single file.

A TIFF image may be uncompressed or use a compression scheme internally. Two of the most widely used compression schemes in TIFF files are lossless, including LZW and, for bitonal images CCITT Group 4, as used for facsimile transmission [fax]. JPEG baseline DCT-based lossy compression is also used.

Several subtypes and extensions of TIFF exist, including TIFF/EP, TIFF/IT, DNG, GeoTIFF, TIFF-FX, and BigTIFF. Multi-image TIFFs may represent sequences of images (such as scanned pages of a document), image tiles, or different versions of the same image, for example Pyramid TIFFs that incorporate images at different resolutions (often tiled). Some software that can read and display a TIFF file may only open the primary image.

Specifications

• TIFF, Revision 6.0 (1992-06-03)
  • TIFF Revision 5.0 (1988-08-08)
    • HTML
    • Text
  • Tag Image File Format Rev 4.0 (1987-04-31)
    • HTML
    • Text
• Adobe PageMaker 6.0 TIFF Technical Notes (1995-09-14)
• Adobe Photoshop TIFF Technical Notes (2002-03-22)
• Adobe Photoshop TIFF Technical Note 3 (2005-04-08)

Metadata tags

• http://www.digitizationguidelines.gov/guidelines/TIFF_Metadata_Final.pdf
• http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/content/tiff_tags.shtml

Compression

Tag 259 indicates the image compression scheme, as a coded integer. Some of the defined compression schemes are listed below.

Code	Compression scheme
1	uncompressed
2, 32771	1-dimensional CCITT Group 3. Essentially the same as compression code 3, but with different settings. There are no end-of-line markers, and each row is aligned on a byte boundary (or a 2-byte boundary for code 32771).
3	1- or 2-dimensional CCITT Group 3, depending on the value of T4Options bit 0.
4	CCITT Group 4
5	LZW
6, 7	JPEG
8, 32946	DEFLATE
9, 10	JBIG (refer to TIFF-FX)
32773	PackBits
32809	ThunderScan compression
34661	JBIG
34712	JPEG2000
34718, 34719, 34720	MODI_BLC, MODI_VECTOR, MODI_PTC (refer to MDI)
34892	Lossy JPEG (refer to DNG)

Color types

Tag 262 indicates the color type ("photometric interpretation") of the image, as a coded integer. Some of the defined color types are listed below.

Code	Color type
0	Grayscale or bi-level, white is 0
1	Grayscale or bi-level, black is 0
2	RGB
3	Palette color
5	CMYK
6	YCbCr
8	CIE L*a*b*
9	ICC L*a*b*
10	ITU L*a*b* (refer to TIFF-FX)
32803	CFA (refer to DNG)
32844	CIE Log2(L)
32845	CIE Log2(L) (u',v')
34892	LinearRaw (refer to DNG)

Related formats

See also Category:TIFF.

Tag 32932 contains TIFF annotation data.

Tag 33723 contains IPTC data.

Tag 34377 contains Photoshop Image Resources.

Tags 34665 (Exif IFD), 34853 (GPS IFD), and 40965 (Interoperability IFD) point to Exif directories.

Tag 34675 contains an ICC profile.

Sample images

• http://www.fileformat.info/format/tiff/sample/index.htm
• http://www.remotesensing.org/libtiff/images.html
• http://people.sc.fsu.edu/~jburkardt/data/tif/tif.html
• https://github.com/openplanets/format-corpus/tree/master/tiff-examples

External links

• Adobe Developer Resources for TIFF
• LibTIFF
• TIFF.js
• JHOVE2 TIFF Module Specification 2.0.0 (useful TIFF information)
• TIFF Tag: Compression