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Related Pages
TIFF Image Conversion and Viewers
Snowbound Software’s extensive experience working with TIFF images has led us to develop software that views and converts to and from the TIFF format and all of its associated compressions (see chart below) with great precision and speed.
- RasterMaster Imaging SDK – Build TIFF viewing, manipulation, and conversion, including searchable TIFF files, into your applications.
- VirtualViewer Document Processing Application – Quickly view, annotate, and print TIFF files through a standard Web browser.
- SnowBatch Batch Conversion – Faster file conversion to TIFF right from your desktop or server
The TIFF Format
TIFF (.tiff or .tif) or Tagged Image File Format is a common format for storing and sending raster graphics (bitmap) across programs and computer platforms. TIFF was developed in 1986 by the Aldus Corporation (which is now part of Adobe) as a means of establishing a standard method of storing black-and-white scanned documents. Today, TIFF files are most often used with high color depth images, making them popular in graphic design, desktop publishing and medical imaging.
There are several advantages to using TIFF.
- It is a platform-independent format, therefore compatible on both Macs and PCs.
- TIFF is very flexible when it comes to information fields and compression schemes.
- It is a lossless image format, meaning no image quality is lost when the image is altered.
- TIFF supports multiple formats, enabling multiple pages and multi-page documents to be saved as a single TIFF file instead of several files.
- One of the biggest benefits to using TIFF lies in the fact almost every image-editing program can create or save a file in TIFF format at any resolution.
TIFF files are composed of three unique data structures:
- Image File Header - defines the image size, number of colors, and other information needed to display the image
- Image file directory - data structure within a TIFF file containing all information on one image stored in that TIFF file. A TIFF file can have many IFDs
- Bitmap Data (Directory Entry)
The Evolution of TIFF
This first release of TIFF was the third major revision of the TIFF format and was thought of as TIFF Revision 3.0. However, in April 1987 they released the first real widely used revision, TIFF 4.0. It was quickly followed up with TIFF 5.0 in August 1988. TIFF 5.0 enhanced the Compression of grayscale and color images along with adding two new tags to more fully define the characteristics of full color RGB data. In June 1992, TIFF 6.0 was released and support for CMYK and YCbCr color images and the JPEG compression method was added. There are currently no patents for TIFF however Adobe Systems holds the copyright for the TIFF specification
Additional Resources for Tiff Conversion and Viewing
- More information on converting PDF to TIFF directly and rapidly, without having to invoke any external application or print driver.
- Snowbound Tech Tips:
- Snowbound Imaging Article: Document and imaging considerations for businesses
- Learn more about Snowbound Software solutions for image conversion.
References and Resources
- Developer resources on TIFF form Adobe
- TIFF, Tag Image File Format, FAQ
- The Unofficial TIFF Home Page
Important: As we all know document and image specifications are intentionally loosely written and rarely updated. As a result many applications create documents “incorrectly” and they do not adhere to the latest specifications.
In order to maintain the highest ethical standards and help provide customers with the most positive user experience, Snowbound Software recommends that, as part of your purchase process, you test your own sample documents against our products. Snowbound, unlike most competitors, develops its own technology. If in the rare case you come across a problem or non-conforming document or image, we can often fix it.
| B = Base J = in Java | Win | Java | .NET | Unix | |||||
| D = In development | READ | WRITE | READ | WRITE | READ | WRITE | READ | WRITE | |
| O = Optional N = Not Available | |||||||||
| Format | Ext | ||||||||
| TIFF_2D | B | B | B | ||||||
| TIFF_ABIC | tif | O | O | O | J | ||||
| TIFF_ABIC_BW | tif | O | O | O | J | ||||
| TIFF_CMYK | tif | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | B |
| TIFF_G3_FAX | tif | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | B |
| TIFF_G4_FAX | tif | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | B |
| TIFF_G4_FAX_FO | tif | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | B |
| TIFF_G4_FAX_STRIP | tif | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | |
| TIFF_HUFFMAN | tif | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | |
| TIFF_JBIG | tif | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | B |
| TIFF_JPEG | tif | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | B |
| TIFF_LZW | tif | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | B |
| TIFF_PACK | tif | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | B |
| TIFF_UNCOMPRESSED | tif | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | B |
Complete Format Matrix
