TIFF
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.
Contents |
Specifications
- TIFF, Revision 6.0 (1992-06-03)
- 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 known compression schemes are listed below.
| Code | Compression scheme |
|---|---|
| 1 | uncompressed |
| 2 | CCITTRLE. 1-dimensional CCITT Group 3. Essentially the same as code 3, but with different settings. There are no end-of-line markers, and each row is aligned on a byte boundary. See this description from the Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats. |
| 3 | 1- or 2-dimensional CCITT Group 3, depending on the value of T4Options bit 0. |
| 4 | CCITT Group 4 |
| 5 | LZW |
| 6 | "Old style" JPEG |
| 7 | "New style" JPEG |
| 8 | DEFLATE |
| 9, 10 | JBIG (refer to TIFF-FX) |
| 32766 | NEXT |
| 32771 | CCITTRLEW. Same as code 2, except that rows are aligned on a 2-byte boundary. |
| 32773 | PackBits |
| 32809 | ThunderScan compression |
| 32895, 32896, 32897, 32898 | IT8CTPAD, IT8LW, IT8MP, IT8BL (refer to TIFF/IT) |
| 32908, 32909 | PIXARFILM, PIXARLOG |
| 32946 | DEFLATE (same as code 8) |
| 32947 | DCS |
| 34661 | JBIG |
| 34676, 34677 | SGILOG, SGILOG24 |
| 34692 | (Refer to LuraDocument Format.) |
| 34712 | JPEG 2000 |
| 34713 | (Refer to Nikon NEF.) |
| 34718, 34719, 34720 | (Refer to MDI. Might not be used in genuine TIFF files.) |
| 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
