Tag Image File Format or Tagged Image File Format, commonly known by the abbreviations TIFF or TIF, is an

image file format An image file format is a file format for a digital image. There are many formats that can be used, such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Most formats up until 2022 were for storing 2D images, not 3D ones. The data stored in an image file format may be co ...

for storing

raster graphics upright=1, The Smiley, smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Enlarging further, each pixel can be analyzed, with their colors constructed through combination of the values for ...

images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is widely supported by scanning,

faxing Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other out ...

word processing A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicate ...

optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronics, electronic or machine, mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo ...

, image manipulation,

desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using dedicated software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online co ...

, and page-layout applications. The format was created by the

Aldus Corporation Aldus Corporation was an American software company best known for its pioneering desktop publishing software. PageMaker, the company's most well-known product, ushered in the modern era of desktop computers such as the Macintosh seeing widesp ...

for use in desktop publishing. It published the latest version 6.0 in 1992, subsequently updated with an

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), formerly Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American software, computer software company based in San Jose, California. It offers a wide range of programs from web design tools, photo manipulation and vector creation, through to ...

copyright after the latter acquired Aldus in 1994. Several Aldus or Adobe technical notes have been published with minor extensions to the format, and several specifications have been based on TIFF 6.0, including TIFF/EP (ISO 12234-2), TIFF/IT (ISO 12639), TIFF-F (RFC 2306) and TIFF-FX (RFC 3949).

History

TIFF was created as an attempt to get desktop scanner vendors of the mid-1980s to agree on a common scanned image file format, in place of a multitude of

proprietary format A proprietary file format is a file format of a company, organization, or individual that contains data that is ordered and stored according to a particular encoding-scheme, such that the decoding and interpretation of this stored data is easily ac ...

s. In the beginning, TIFF was only a

binary image A binary image is a digital image that consists of pixels that can have one of exactly two colors, usually black and white. Each pixel is stored as a single bit — i.e. either a 0 or 1. A binary image can be stored in memory as a bitmap: a p ...

format (only two possible values for each pixel), because that was all that desktop scanners could handle. As scanners became more powerful, and as desktop computer disk space became more plentiful, TIFF grew to accommodate

grayscale In digital photography, computer-generated imagery, and colorimetry, a greyscale (more common in Commonwealth English) or grayscale (more common in American English) image is one in which the value of each pixel is a single sample (signal), s ...

images, then color images. Today, TIFF, along with

JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

and

PNG Portable Network Graphics (PNG, officially pronounced , colloquially pronounced ) is a raster-graphics file format that supports lossless data compression. PNG was developed as an improved, non-patented replacement for Graphics Interchange ...

, is a popular format for deep-color images. The first version of the TIFF specification was published by the

in the autumn of 1986 after two major earlier draft releases. It can be labeled as Revision 3.0. It was published after a series of meetings with various scanner manufacturers and software developers. In April 1987 Revision 4.0 was released and it contained mostly minor enhancements. In October 1988 Revision 5.0 was released and it added support for palette color images and LZW compression.TIFF Revision 6.0 Final — June 3, 1992
Retrieved on 2024-03-29 TIFF is a complex format, defining many tags of which typically only a few are used in each file. This led to implementations supporting many varying subsets of the format, a situation that gave rise to the joke that TIFF stands for ''Thousands of Incompatible File Formats''. This problem was addressed in revision 6.0 of the TIFF specification (June 1992) by introducing a distinction between ''Baseline TIFF'' (which all implementations were required to support) and ''TIFF Extensions'' (which are optional). Additional extensions are defined in two supplements to the specification which were published in September 1995 and March 2002TIFF Specification Supplement 2
Retrieved 2022-06-29 respectively.

Overview

A TIFF file contains one ''or several'' images, termed ''subfiles'' in the specification. The basic use case for having multiple subfiles is to encode a multipage

telefax Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other out ...

in a single file, but it is also allowed to have different subfiles be different variants of the same image, for example scanned at different resolutions. Rather than being a continuous range of bytes in the file, each subfile is a data structure whose top-level entity is called an ''image file directory'' (IFD). Baseline TIFF readers are only required to make use of the first subfile, but each IFD has a field for linking to a next IFD. The IFDs are where the ''tags'' for which TIFF is named are located. Each IFD contains one or several ''entries'', each of which is identified by its tag. The tags are arbitrary 16-bit numbers; their symbolic names such as ImageWidth often used in discussions of TIFF data do not appear explicitly in the file itself. Each IFD entry has an associated ''value'', which may be decoded based on general rules of the format, but it depends on the tag what that value then ''means''. There may within a single IFD be no more than one entry with any particular tag. Some tags are for linking to the actual image data, other tags specify how the image data should be interpreted, and still other tags are used for image

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

. TIFF images are made up of rectangular grids of pixels. The two axes of this geometry are termed horizontal (or X, or width) and vertical (or Y, or length). Horizontal and vertical resolution need not be equal (since in a telefax they typically would not be equal). A baseline TIFF image divides the vertical range of the image into one or several ''strips'', which are encoded (in particular: compressed) separately. Historically this served to facilitate TIFF readers (such as fax machines) with limited capacity to store uncompressed data — one strip would be decoded and then immediately printed — but the present specification motivates it by "increased editing flexibility and efficient I/O buffering". A TIFF extension provides the alternative of ''tiled'' images, in which case both the horizontal and the vertical ranges of the image are decomposed into smaller units. An example of these things, which also serves to give a flavor of how tags are used in the TIFF encoding of images, is that a striped TIFF image would use tags 273 (StripOffsets), 278 (RowsPerStrip), and 279 (StripByteCounts). The StripOffsets point to the blocks of image data, the StripByteCounts say how long each of these blocks are (as stored in the file), and RowsPerStrip says how many rows of pixels there are in a strip; the latter is required even in the case of having just one strip, in which case it merely duplicates the value of tag 257 (ImageLength). A tiled TIFF image instead uses tags 322 (TileWidth), 323 (TileLength), 324 (TileOffsets), and 325 (TileByteCounts). The pixels within each strip or tile appear in

row-major In computing, row-major order and column-major order are methods for storing multidimensional arrays in linear storage such as random access memory. The difference between the orders lies in which elements of an array are contiguous in memory. I ...

order, left to right and top to bottom. The data for one pixel is made up of one or several ''samples''; for example an

RGB The RGB color model is an additive color model in which the red, green, and blue primary colors of light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three ...

image would have one Red sample, one Green sample, and one Blue sample per pixel, whereas a greyscale or palette color image only has one sample per pixel. TIFF allows for both

additive Additive may refer to: Mathematics * Additive function, a function in number theory * Additive map, a function that preserves the addition operation * Additive set-function see Sigma additivity * Additive category, a preadditive category with fin ...

(e.g. RGB,

RGBA RGBA stands for red green blue alpha. While it is sometimes described as a color space, it is actually a three-channel RGB color model supplemented with a fourth ''alpha channel''. Alpha indicates how opaque each pixel is and allows an image to ...

) and subtractive (e.g.

CMYK The CMYK color model (also known as process color, or four color) is a subtractive color model, based on the CMY color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. The abbreviation ''CMYK'' refers ...

) color models. TIFF does not constrain the number of samples per pixel (except that there must be enough samples for the chosen color model), nor does it constrain how many bits are encoded for each sample, but baseline TIFF only requires that readers support a few combinations of color model and bit-depth of images. Support for custom sets of samples is very useful for scientific applications; 3 samples per pixel is at the low end of

multispectral imaging Multispectral imaging captures image data within specific wavelength ranges across the electromagnetic spectrum. The wavelengths may be separated by filters or detected with the use of instruments that are sensitive to particular wavelengths, ...

, and

hyperspectral imaging Hyperspectral imaging collects and processes information from across the electromagnetic spectrum. The goal of hyperspectral imaging is to obtain the spectrum for each pixel in the image of a scene, with the purpose of finding objects, identifyi ...

may require hundreds of samples per pixel. TIFF supports having all samples for a pixel next to each other within a single strip/tile (PlanarConfiguration = 1) but also different samples in different strips/tiles (PlanarConfiguration = 2). The default format for a sample value is as an unsigned integer, but a TIFF extension allows declaring them as alternatively being signed integers or

IEEE-754 The IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE 754) is a technical standard for floating-point arithmetic originally established in 1985 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The standard addressed many proble ...

floats, as well as specify a custom range for valid sample values. TIFF images may be uncompressed, compressed using a

lossless compression Lossless compression is a class of data compression that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data with no loss of information. Lossless compression is possible because most real-world data exhibits statisti ...

scheme, or compressed using a

lossy compression In information technology, lossy compression or irreversible compression is the class of data compression methods that uses inexact approximations and partial data discarding to represent the content. These techniques are used to reduce data size ...

scheme. The lossless LZW compression scheme has at times been regarded as the standard compression for TIFF, but this is technically a TIFF extension, and the TIFF6 specification notes the patent situation regarding LZW. Compression schemes vary significantly in at what level they process the data: LZW acts on the stream of bytes encoding a strip or tile (without regard to sample structure, bit depth, or row width), whereas the JPEG compression scheme both transforms the sample structure of pixels (switching to a different color model) and encodes pixels in 8×8 blocks rather than row by row. Most data in TIFF files are numerical, but the format supports declaring data as rather being textual, if appropriate for a particular tag. Tags that take textual values include Artist, Copyright, DateTime, DocumentName, InkNames, and Model.

MIME type

The MIME type ''image/tiff'' (defined in RFC 3302) without an application parameter is used for Baseline TIFF 6.0 files or to indicate that it is not necessary to identify a specific subset of TIFF or TIFF extensions. The optional "application" parameter (Example: Content-type: image/tiff; application=foo) is defined for image/tiff to identify a particular subset of TIFF and TIFF extensions for the encoded image data, if it is known. According to RFC 3302, specific TIFF subsets or TIFF extensions used in the application parameter must be published as an RFC.

MIME A mime artist, or simply mime (from Greek language, Greek , , "imitator, actor"), is a person who uses ''mime'' (also called ''pantomime'' outside of Britain), the acting out of a story through body motions without the use of speech, as a the ...

type ''image/tiff-fx'' (defined in RFC 3949 and RFC 3950) is based on TIFF 6.0 with TIFF Technical Notes TTN1 (Trees) and TTN2 (Replacement TIFF/JPEG specification). It is used for

Internet fax The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

compatible with the ITU-T Recommendations for Group 3 black-and-white, grayscale and color

fax Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other out ...

Digital preservation

Adobe holds the copyright on the TIFF specification (aka TIFF 6.0) along with the two supplements that have been published. These documents can be found on the Adobe TIFF Resources page. The

Fax Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other out ...

standard in RFC 3949 is based on these TIFF specifications. TIFF files that strictly use the basic "tag sets" as defined in TIFF 6.0 along with restricting the compression technology to the methods identified in TIFF 6.0 and are adequately tested and verified by multiple sources for all documents being created can be used for storing documents. Commonly seen issues encountered in the content and

document management A document management system (DMS) is usually a computerized system used to store, share, track and manage files or documents. Some systems include history tracking where a log of the various versions created and modified by different users is r ...

industry associated with the use of TIFF files arise when the structures contain proprietary headers, are not properly documented, or contain "wrappers" or other containers around the TIFF datasets, or include improper compression technologies, or those compression technologies are not properly implemented. Variants of TIFF can be used within

document imaging Document imaging is an information technology category for systems capable of replicating documents commonly used in business. Document imaging systems can take many forms including microfilm, on demand printers, facsimile machines, copiers, multi ...

and content/document management systems using

CCITT The International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) is one of the three Sectors (branches) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It is responsible for coordinating standards for telecommunicat ...

Group IV 2D compression which supports

black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of grey. It is also known as greyscale in technical settings. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, ...

(bitonal,

monochrome A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, mon ...

) images, among other compression technologies that support

color Color (or colour in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though co ...

. When storage capacity and network bandwidth was a greater issue than commonly seen in today's server environments, high-volume storage scanning, documents were scanned in black and white (not in color or in grayscale) to conserve storage capacity. The inclusion of the SampleFormat tag in TIFF 6.0 allows TIFF files to handle advanced pixel data types, including integer images with more than 8 bits per channel and floating point images. This tag made TIFF 6.0 a viable format for scientific image processing where extended precision is required. An example would be the use of TIFF to store images acquired using scientific CCD cameras that provide up to 16 bits per

photosite {{Short pages monitor Because TIFF/IT P1 had a number of limitations, an extended format was developed. The ISO 12639:2004 introduced a new extended conformance level - TIFF/IT-P2 (Profile 2). TIFF/IT-P2 added a number of functions to TIFF/IT-P1 like: * CMYK spot colors only (when appropriate) * Support for the compression of CT and BP data (JPEG and Deflate) * Support for multiple LW and CT files in a single file * Support for copydot files through a new file type called SD (Screened Data) * There was some effort to create a possibility to concatenate FP, LW, and CT files into a single file called the GF (Group Final) file, but this was not defined in a draft version of ISO 12639:2004. This format was not widely used.

Private tags

The TIFF/IT specification preserved the TIFF possibility for developers to utilize private tags. The TIFF/IT specification is very precise regarding how these private tags should be treated - they should be parsed, but ignored. Private tags in the TIFF/IT-P1 specification were originally intended to provide developers with ways to add specific functionality for specific applications. Private tags can be used by developers (e.g., Scitex) to preserve specific printing values or other functionality. Private tags are typically labelled with tag numbers greater than or equal to 32768. All private tags must be requested from Adobe (the TIFF administrator) and registered. In 1992, the DDAP (Digital Distribution of Advertising for Publication, later Digital Directions in Applications for Production) developed their requirement statement for digital ad delivery. This was presented to ANSI-accredited CGATS (Committee for Graphic Arts Technology Standards) for development of an accredited file format standard for the delivery of digital ads. CGATS reviewed their alternatives for this purpose and TIFF seemed like the ideal candidate, except for the fact that it could not handle certain required functionalities. CGATS asked Aldus (the TIFF administrator) for a block of their own TIFF private tags in order to implement what eventually became TIFF/IT. For example, the ability to identify the sequence of the colors is handled by tag 34017 - the Color Sequence Tag. TIFF/IT was created to satisfy the need for a transport-independent method of encoding raster data in the IT8.1, IT8.2 and IT8.5 standards.

Standards

TIFF/IT was defined in ANSI IT8.8–1993 standard in 1993 and later revised in the International Standard ''ISO 12639:1998 - Prepress digital data exchange – Tag image file format for image technology (TIFF/IT)''. The ISO standard replaces ANSI IT8.8–1993. It specifies a media-independent means for prepress electronic data exchange. The ISO 12639:2004 (Second edition) standard for TIFF/IT superseded the ISO 12639:1998. It was also later extended in ISO 12639:2004 / Amd. 1:2007 - Use of JBIG2-Amd2 compression in TIFF/IT.

References

External links

Adobe TIFF Resources page
Adobe links to the specification and main TIFF resources
LibTIFF Home Page
Widely used library used for reading and writing TIFF files as well as TIFF file processing command line tools

Everything you always wanted to know about the TIFF File Format but were afraid to ask
TIFF description
at Digital Preservation (The Library of Congress)

Specification for revision 4.0, in HTML (warning: for historical purposes only, the TIFF 6.0 spec contains the full 4.0 revision)

Specification for revision 5.0, in HTML (warning: for historical purposes only, the TIFF 6.0 spec contains the full 5.0 revision)
TIFF Revision 6.0
Specification for revision 6.0, in PDF (warning: there is an outdated and flawed section (jpeg compression), corrected in supplements, and there are additions to this PDF too – for the full specification, see th

* - image/tiff, and - image/tiff-fx, - Tag Image File Format (TIFF) - F Profile for Facsimile, - legacy exchange of images in the Internet.
Code Tiff Tag Reader
- Easy readable code of a TIFF tag reader in Mathworks Matlab (Tiff 5.0/6.0)
AlternaTIFF
- Free in-browser TIFF viewer * eiStream Annotation (also known as Wang or Kodak Annotation). Developed by eiStream. ** * ADEO Imaging Annotation ** {{Graphics file formats High dynamic range file formats Raster graphics file formats Adobe Inc.