TIFF

File Format
Name	TIFF
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Graphics TIFF
Extension(s)	.tif, .tiff
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.

TIFF/A is a proposed archival standard of TIFF which is in progress of development.

Identification

TIFF files begin with bytes 4D 4D 00 2A (big-endian), or 49 49 2A 00 (little-endian).

This does not account for BigTIFF format, which you may or may not consider to be a kind of TIFF.

File signatures

Some TIFF-like formats use a different file signature (the first few bytes of the file) to help identify them. Some of the known signatures are listed here.

(For formats lacking a public specification, this table may include a hypothetical signature for a byte order that has not been observed.)

Big-endian signature	Little-endian signature	Format
4d 4d 00 2a	49 49 2a 00	TIFF
4d 4d 00 2b	49 49 2b 00	BigTIFF
4d 4d 00 55	49 49 55 00	Panasonic RAW/RW2
	49 49 bc 01	JPEG XR
	49 49 4e 31	NIFF (Navy Image File Format)
4d 4d 43 52	49 49 52 43	DNG camera profile
4d 4d 4f 52	49 49 52 4f	Olympus ORF
4d 4d 53 52	49 49 52 53	Olympus ORF
	45 50 2a 00	MDI

Compression

Tag 259 indicates the image compression scheme, as a coded integer. Some of the known compression schemes are listed below. Some of these are not used in genuine TIFF files, but only in other TIFF-like formats.

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 2-bit RLE
32767	(Used by Sony ARW.)
32769	Packed RAW / NIKON_PACK (Used by Epson ERF.)
32770	(Used by Samsung SRW.)
32771	CCITTRLEW. Same as code 2, except that rows are aligned on a 2-byte boundary.
32773	PackBits
32809	ThunderScan compression
32867	Kodak KDC (unconfirmed)
32895, 32896, 32897, 32898	IT8CTPAD, IT8LW, IT8MP, IT8BL (refer to TIFF/IT)
32908	PIXARFILM. Pixar 10-bit LZW
32909	PIXARLOG. Pixar companded 11-bit ZIP
32946	DEFLATE (same as code 8)
32947	(Used by Kodak DCS.)
34661	JBIG
34676	SGILOG. 32-bit SGI Log Luminance RLE
34677	SGILOG24. 24-bit SGI Log Luminance packed
34692	(Used by LuraDocument Format.)
34712	JPEG 2000
34713	(Used by Nikon NEF.)
34715	JBIG2 (TIFF-FX extension)
34718, 34719, 34720	(Used by MDI.)
34892	Lossy JPEG (refer to DNG)

Private/rogue compression codes:

Code	Compression scheme
99	JPEG (Used by Leaf MOS.)
262	Kodak 262 (unconfirmed)
65000	(Used by Kodak DCR.)
65535	(Used by Pentax PEF.)

Color types

Tag 262 indicates the color type ("photometric interpretation") of the image, as a coded integer. Some of the known 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.

• Tag 37724 (ImageSourceData) contains "Layer and Mask Information" from PSD format.

• Tag 50933 (ExtraCameraProfiles) points to DNG camera profiles.

• Raw camera formats are often based on TIFF.

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) - Defines tag 37724, compression types 7 and 8, photometric interpretation types 8 and 9
• Adobe Photoshop TIFF Technical Note 3 (2005-04-08)

Metadata tags

• AWare Systems TIFF Tag Reference
• http://www.digitizationguidelines.gov/guidelines/TIFF_Metadata_Final.pdf
• http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/content/tiff_tags.shtml

Metaformat files

• Synalysis grammar file (for Hexinator / Synalize It!; more details)

Software

Most multi-format image viewers and editors support TIFF to some extent. Applications listed here have been selected arbitrarily.

• LibTIFF
• TIFF.js
• XnView
• IrfanView

Sample files

• 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

• Wikipedia article
• TIFF File Format Summary, from the Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats
• Adobe Developer Resources for TIFF
• JHOVE2 TIFF Module Specification 2.0.0 (useful TIFF information)
• TIFF chart
• TIFF Format Preservation Assessment (British Library)
• TIFF Analysis 3rd Release
• TIFF/A Standard Initiative