Tagged Image File Format
Writableimage · also known as TIFF
The Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) is a raster image format originally developed by the Aldus Corporation, primarily for use in scanning and desktop publishing. When Adobe Systems Incorporated purchased Aldus in 1994, they acquired the rights to the TIFF format and have maintained it since then. TIFF files comprise three sections: an Image File Header (IFH), an Image File Directory (IFD), and the image data. TIFF files can contain multiple images (multi-page TIFF), and each image has a separate IFD. The IFH always appears at the beginning of the file, and is immediately followed by a pointer to the first IFD. The IFD contains metadata which describes the associated image, stored as a series of tags. The IFD also contains a pointer to the actual image data. TIFF supports colour depths from 1 bit to 24 bit (e.g. monochrome to true colour), and a wide range of compression types (RLE, LZW, CCITT Group 3 and Group 4, and JPEG), as well as uncompressed data.
Identify it
| Extensions | .tif.tiff |
|---|---|
| MIME types | image/tiff |
| Signatures | 49492a00 at byte 0 (TIFF generic (little-endian))4d4d002a at byte 0 (TIFF generic (big-endian)) |
| PRONOM | fmt/353 |
| Wikidata | Q215106Q27231654 |
| Library of Congress | fdd000022 |
| Apple UTI | public.tiff |
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Open it
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- GD Graphics LibraryOpen source
- GDALOpen source
- GIMPOpen source
- ImageMagickOpen source
- InVesaliusOpen source
- libexiv2Open source
- LibRawOpen source
- LibreOffice DrawOpen source
- LibTIFFOpen source
- OpenJUMPOpen source
- Q141647655Open source
- Q141647660Open source
- Q141647665Open source
- ShotwellOpen source
- SimThyrOpen source
- Visualization LibraryOpen source
- Visualization ToolkitOpen source
- XfigOpen source
- AbydosOpen source
- Apache TikaOpen source
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- AudiverisOpen source
- Bio-Formats LibraryOpen source
- CinePaintOpen source
- ConverseenOpen source
- CropToolOpen source
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- ExifToolOpen source
- F-SpotOpen source
- Ginkgo CADxOpen source
- GoobiOpen source
- GQViewOpen source
- imageioOpen source
- JHOVEOpen source
- KPaintOpen source
And 243 more in the JSON record.
Convert it
| To | With | Fidelity | Command and losses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portable Network Graphics | ImageMagick | Lossless | convert in.tif out.pngPixels kept; some metadata, colour profiles or layers may be dropped. |
| GIF 89a | ImageMagick | Lossy | convert in.tif out.gifReduced to 256 colours. |
| JPEG File Interchange Format 1.02 | ImageMagick | Lossy | convert in.tif out.jpgLossy compression. |
| WebP | ImageMagick | Lossy | convert in.tif out.webpLossy compression. |
Versions and variants (2)
Sources
From Converters (FFmpeg, ImageMagick, Pandoc, LibreOffice), Just Solve the File Format Problem (File Formats Wiki), PRONOM, Wikidata. Updated 2026-10-24.