What Is the TIFF Image Format?

This guide explains the TIFF Image Format, why it matters, how it works, and how to evaluate or use it in practical situations.

If you are someone who is interested in graphic design or photography, TIFF files can be very familiar. But what exactly is a TIFF file? This guide will show you this important yet underrated image file format.

What is a TIFF file?

TIFF stands for Tagged Image File Format and is an image format developed by Aldus in 1986. TIFF files use lossless compression, resulting in a size Larger overall file results in higher image quality. This makes TIFF the ideal choice for anyone who needs the highest quality images.

TIFF files store cards, layers, transparency similar to PNG and are fully compatible with many popular photo editing applications, such as Photoshop.

TIFF files also support enhanced metadata storage through GeoTIFF. GeoTIFF is the technology used to store TIFF file metadata, which contains important information such as GPS coordinates for which the photo was taken (if using a camera).

Despite its many positive sides, TIFF also has drawbacks. Although TIFF files can be opened and viewed with Windows Picture and Photo Viewer, you will need third-party software to edit them. Your image editor may not support or work perfectly with TIFF files and in this case, you may need to convert the files to another format before working with them. Depending on the conversion method, this may change or delete image metadata.

Another major drawback is that the TIFF files are not web friendly. For TIFF files to display in the browser, third party plugins will need to be installed. However, this is completely unrealistic for web designers to use TIFF, instead of alternatives like JPEG or PNG, because the size of these files is much smaller than TIFF.

How to open and edit TIFF files

Although you can open and view TIFF files using Windows' built-in image viewer, you need third-party applications to view and edit TIFF files more easily.

The following Windows applications can be used to open and / or edit TIFF files:

ACDSee, Adobe Photoshop, CorelDRAW, GIMP, GraphicConverter, XnView

Alternatively, you can install the TIF Viewer with the Drive extension for Google Chrome, allowing you to view TIFF files stored in Google Drive through the browser.

How to convert TIFF files

In some cases, converting a TIFF file to another popular image format before manipulating it is your best solution. However, keep in mind that converting to some formats, such as JPEG, can lead to loss of quality, one of the biggest advantages of TIFF.

Although there are many different applications that you can download to convert TIFF files, this process can be completed entirely through the web without having to download any third-party software.