Introduction
TIFF was created by Aldus in 1986 for desktop publishing and scanners, and passed to Adobe when it bought Aldus. The current baseline specification is TIFF 6.0 from 1992. It is a flexible container: one file can hold several pages, any of a long list of compression methods, high bit depths and many colour spaces, all described by numbered tags.
That flexibility makes TIFF common in print, scanning, archiving, medical and geographic imaging (GeoTIFF). Many camera raw formats, such as DNG and CR2, are built on the same structure.
Variations
| Format | Variation | About | Open |
|---|---|---|---|
.TIFF | BigTIFF | TIFF with 64-bit offsets, for images and files larger than 4 GB. | Open |
.TIFF | Tagged Image File Format (classic) | Flexible tagged images for print, scanning and archives, often multi-page. | Open |
Classic TIFF
The original layout, described by TIFF 6.0 and used by almost every
.tif file. Offsets are 32-bit, so a file can be at most 4 GB.
The file starts with II or MM for the byte order, then the
number 42: 49 49 2A 00 or 4D 4D 00 2A.
BigTIFF
A variant with 64-bit offsets and counts, for files over 4 GB such as large scans, microscope slides and satellite images. The tags and their meanings are the same; the header, directories and entries are wider.
The byte order mark is followed by the number 43 instead of 42:
49 49 2B 00 or 4D 4D 00 2B.
Also used for
Links
Software
- Adobe Photoshop (Windows, macOS)
- GIMP (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- Krita (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- IrfanView (Windows)
- XnView MP (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- ImageMagick (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- QGIS for GeoTIFF (Windows, macOS, Linux)
Developers
Reference
- TIFF tag reference, AWare Systems