What is a .TIFF file?
.TIFF and .TIF represent the extension of TIFF tagged image raster image files. TIF extension, the shorter of the two, and popular in dos/windows system, still remains valid. The TIFF file format was invented in 1986 by Aldus Corporation; Adobe later acquired Aldus and maintains a specification for TIFF 6.0 including the Adobe notes.
TIFF image file contains the image bit-map data, but not the vector graphic data. It includes bilevel page, grayscale images, Palette color images, RGB, CMYK, Lab, hi-bit scientific rasters, alpha channel, thumbnails and multipage image information stored in a single file. Scanning, print prepress output formats, Photography export formats, Archival masters, Facsimile (fax), Microscopy and other medical imaging and Geographic Information System (GIS) rasters are few application areas of TIFF file.
There exist other profiles based TIFF that shares the same file extension. BigTIFF, the file format which uses 64-bit offsets in TIFF format, goes beyond the 4 GiB limit of classica TIFF file format. It is widely used in whole-slide imaging, big maps. GeoTIFF format uses geo referrenced TIFF files, containing geographics information for geographic information system such as Remote sensing. TIFF/EP is the electronic photography profile while TIFF-FX / Class F refers to the file formats which uses facsimile standard.
One must look out into the first four bytes to confirm TIFF or Big-Tiff; Classica TIFF uses four bytes of 49 49 2A 00 and/or 4D 4D 00 2A while BigTIFF uses 49 49 2B 00 or 4D 4D 00 2B.
How to open a .TIFF file
Open a .TIFF file on Windows
- 1 Go to the folder with your file in File Explorer. Usually, downloaded files end up in Downloads.
- 2 Double-click your .TIFF file if you have an app for .tiff files on your computer. In case it does not open, move on to step three.
- 3 Right-click your .TIFF file -> select .
- 4 Choose Adobe Photoshop in the list (Windows 11: choose Always). For Windows 10 -> put a check on "Always use this app to open .tiff files" and click OK.
Still not opening? See common problems and fixes, or view it in your browser.
Programs for Windows
- Adobe Photoshop paid
- Adobe Lightroom Classic paid
- GIMP open-source
- IrfanView freemium
- XnView MP freemium
- Microsoft Photos free
- Aseprite paid
- Krita open-source
Open a .TIFF file on macOS
- 1 In the Finder app, locate your .TIFF file.
- 2 Just double-click your .TIFF file in order to automatically launch the program which is connected with it.
- 3 Need another app on your Mac? Control-click the file (or right-click with a mouse). In the pop-up menu select .
- 4 If it isn't in the list, choose and find the application manually.
Still not opening? See common problems and fixes, or view it in your browser.
Programs for macOS
- Adobe Photoshop paid
- Adobe Lightroom Classic paid
- GIMP open-source
- XnView MP freemium
- Preview free
- Aseprite paid
- Krita open-source
- Apple Photos free
Open a .TIFF file on Linux
- 1 Launch your file manager. Depending on the desktop it may be named Files (GNOME), Dolphin (KDE Plasma), Nemo (Cinnamon) or Thunar (Xfce).
- 2 Double-click the file.
- 3 Or choose another program by right-clicking the file -> .
- 4 Install GIMP (if it is not installed on your computer) from the software centre, repository or Flathub.
Still not opening? See common problems and fixes, or view it in your browser.
Open a .TIFF file on Android
- 1 Launch Files or another file management app.
- 2 In Downloads, find the .TIFF file and open it by tapping.
- 3 A list of apps capable of opening the file will be shown. Tap Krita and press Always to permanently connect the file type with this app.
- 4 No apps able to open this file? Download Krita from the Google Play Store.
Still not opening? See common problems and fixes, or view it in your browser.
Programs for Android
- Krita open-source
- File Viewer for Android freemium
Open a .TIFF file on iPhone / iPad
- 1 Use the Files app and go to On My iPhone, iCloud Drive or Downloads.
- 2 Tap the .TIFF file you want to open.
- 3 If the file can be opened by a built-in iOS app (supported format), it opens automatically.
- 4 Touch and hold the file to get the context menu -> choose -> select Adobe Photoshop from the list of apps.
- 5 If there is no such option, download the app first from the App Store and then tap the document again.
Still not opening? See common problems and fixes, or view it in your browser.
Programs for iPhone / iPad
- Adobe Photoshop paid
- Apple Photos free
Open a .TIFF file online
- 1 Move to the online viewer at the top of this page.
- 2 Drag the file there or select it, and its contents will appear in your browser tab. The file is not uploaded.
Still not opening? See common problems and fixes, or view it in your browser.
Programs for Online
- Adobe Photoshop paid
- Photopea freemium
More details about opening .TIFF files
Windows. In Windows, Microsoft Photos may view many files. Some ancient versions of Windows use Windows Photo Viewer instead. IrfanView and XnView MP may serve in quickly browsing. Photoshop or GIMP will be good for more serious manipulations, when it is necessary to work with layers, apply changes and then export images. Command-line utilities like ImageMagick also can be recommended. For GeoTIFF we would recommend to look at QGIS or ArcGIS Pro. The majority of the software provided in this example is free except for Photoshop (paid).
macOS. In this OS, TIFFs can be easily opened by Preview and exported there. Apple Photos handles many photographic TIFFs. There, the most common for opening and editing TIFFs are programs like Photoshop, GIMP, Lightroom Classic and XnView MP. Preview is free with macOS; Photoshop and Lightroom Classic are paid.
Linux. In Linux, programs like GIMP, Krita, ImageMagick, XnView MP, GNOME Image Viewer open many of usual files. The most effective tools for processing huge scientific or slide or geospatial TIFFs include QGIS and GDAL. Almost all of them are free.
There can also be troubles with compatibility of android systems with TIFF because of different apps used as image viewer in smartphones and tabs. Many File Viewers for Android like File Viewer for Android, the applications from Krita, and geographic systems can successfully open them, but the highly compressed TIFF and very huge TIFFs require pre-formatting. In the iOS and iPadOS, Files and Photos may display only some parts of these formats and Photoshop for iPad will open them.
Web Browser also have problems with TIFF. There could appear some attempts to open these TIFF images on Mac by Safari web browser but Chrome, Edge, and Firefox usually do not provide full native viewing. Web editor - Photopea may work for opening the great part of these files, but very huge, multipage TIFFs, CMYK TIFFs or those using other kinds of compression would have troubles with available amount of memory.
And finally, if a wrong application starts opening the file after your double clicking at them, choose any of them with using the OpenWith or Choose another app menu. In some cases it is possible to check your image with using such tool as ImageMagick identify or ExifTool. QGIS, GDAL can open your GeoTIFF, QuPath or OpenSlide will be perfect for working with bigTIFF whole-slide file, and fax or document editors for Group 3 or Group 4 fax TIFFs.
Technical details
TIFF is a tagged binary format. It usually consists of 8-byte header, one or several IFD(s), tag entries, image strips or tiles, additional sub-IFD structure(s) for thumbnails, smaller images, or smaller pages. The first two bytes in the file indicate the ordering of the bytes , 49 49 "II" (intel order) vs. 4D 4D MM (Motorola/IBM, or big endian), followed by the TIFF ID field: 42 (classic), or 43 (for BigTIFF).
In classic TIFFs (with 32 bit addressing of offsets and lengths) there is an imposed hard maximum for a TIFF size, roughly 4GiB. BigTIFF uses 64bit fields for addressing. As such, the BigTIFS allow larger microslides and geo rasters to overcome classic TIFF size. The standard MIME types for a file are image/tiff; image/x-tiff for the older generation; application/geotiff , usually for geo rasters. Other common compression schemes include PackBits, CCITT Group 3, CCITT Group 4, JPEG, old-style JPEG (for certain applications), JPEG 2000 for a few organizations, LZW. No compression and Deflate/Adobe ZIP are also common.
Tags PhotometricInterpretation, BitsPerSample, etc are defined the same way as above, including bilevel/binary black and white, palette color or grayscale, 24-48-bit colors in RGB and other combinations.
A file can contain multiple images/presentations/pages. In classic use case scanning software writes out IFD sequences in files containing multiple scan pages. In some cases (pyramidal slides; geo raster data with tiling scheme) smaller reduced images/tiles are included. Tags EXIF, Geotiff keys, Orientation and Resolution information as tags; Color Space; IPTC/XMP metadata, Software information as a tag; Maker note and Private tags are available.
Size of the file can vary from small size used for faxed papers to hundreds of MB for archival scans up to tens-of-GiBytes in size (BigTIFF used for the larger microscopy scans). TIFF 6.0 is the baseline Classic specification (with later extensions defined).
How to convert .TIFF files
Conversion to PNG is used in cases when an image with lossless compression is needed and browser support is a factor. ImageMagick could convert using magick input.tiff output.png, thus keeping high precision details and even transparency layer. One should take into account that PNG conversion loses multi-page capability, CMYK color scheme, GeoTiff geographic information system (GIS) tags, plus many of other advanced TIFF capabilities: normally, all of the frames are converted to different individual images.
Use JPEG format for making small previews (like thumbnails) and attaching to letters. The common ImageMagick command will be magick input.tiff -quality 90 output.jpg. JPEG loses transparency option and multi-page capability. JPEG adds irreversible compression loss with every recompression.
Convert multi-page tiff files to PDF to create document or attach to some letter. ImageMagick can run: magick input.tiff output.pdf. Always store your TIFF images as a master if any more detailed processing is required in the future.
GDAL can be used for geospatial data conversion. gdal_translate input.tiff output_cog.tif -of COG converts TIFF to Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF. gdal_translate -of PNG -co WORLDFILE=YES input.tiff output.png produces an auxiliary world file from tiff. CRS must always be stored externally because PNG and JPEG normally do not carry GIS-compatible embedded coordinates.
| Convert to | Tool | Command / note |
|---|---|---|
| PNG | ImageMagick | magick input.tiff output.png Good for lossless web or UI use; multi-page TIFFs usually become one output per page unless a frame is selected. |
| JPEG | ImageMagick | magick input.tiff -quality 90 output.jpg Creates smaller files for photos but loses alpha, many bit depths, multiple pages, and may add lossy compression artifacts. |
| ImageMagick | magick input.tiff output.pdf Useful for scanned document exchange; for many pages, verify page order and resolution before archiving. |
|
| GeoTIFF to Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF | GDAL | gdal_translate input.tiff output_cog.tif -of COG -co COMPRESS=DEFLATE Reorganizes geospatial TIFF for efficient HTTP range access while preserving raster georeferencing. |
| GeoTIFF to PNG plus world file | GDAL | gdal_translate -of PNG -co WORLDFILE=YES input.tiff output.png Produces a broadly viewable image and sidecar georeferencing; GeoTIFF metadata not stored inside PNG. |
| TIFF to WebP | ImageMagick | magick input.tiff -quality 85 output.webp Smaller web delivery; not suitable if the TIFF contains scientific samples, multi-page scans, or required metadata. |
| BigTIFF to tiled compressed TIFF | GDAL | gdal_translate input.tiff output.tif -co TILED=YES -co COMPRESS=DEFLATE -co BIGTIFF=IF_NEEDED Optimizes very large rasters for GIS and avoids the classic TIFF 4 GiB limit when needed. |
Common problems and fixes
The problem “Not a TIFF file, bad magic number” means that either the magic numbers of 49 49 2A 00 or 4D 4D 00 2A are missing at the start of the file, thus meaning that it is not properly formatted. There is a possibility of a wrong file extension, receiving a response code rather than the required file or its corruption. Use your hex reader to check the first 4-8 bytes, and then redownload the proper data. The problem of being unable to read directory and failed reading of directory at some specific offset indicates file truncations or damaged offsets of IFDs. Try using tiffinfo or tiffcp in libtiff or from ImageMagick or use another working version. “Unsupported compression” means that there are codecs that this tool cannot recognize, such as JPEG, old-style JPEG, CCITT Group 3 or Group 4, LZW, JPEG 2000. Use the other software listed above.
The problem with maximum TIFF file size being exceeded means that the size limit of classique TIFF has been crossed. Use Big TIFF files instead; their format contains the header value of 43. Tiled and compressed versions may help as well. With multibitmap (multi page) TIFFs, you can expect problems with other pages than page 1. Preview and IrfanView or XnView MP will give a good idea of all IFDs present in the image. Improper coloring means wrong ICC profiling, too many color planes/other samples. Color management tools, such as Photoshop or ImageMagic are able to convert colors properly. If GeoTIFFs show up to be not in the place where it should be located according to CRS or other files, check CRS and project parameters in gdalinfo and re-project to another CRS with QGIS or ArcGIS Pro. If the raster image is of an extreme size without any compression, it causes memory overloads for computer programs. Old faxes may produce inverted black-white if the tags were incorrectly read - FillOrder, PhotometricInterpretation, or Group 3 and 4 tags.
Security considerations
This file format is neither a macro nor an executable scripting language such as the ones used by Office applications and JavaScript. The most obvious threat lies in parser vulnerabilities since there are numerous possible ways how such an issue can manifest for example through support for compression methods, nested IFDs, big images, private TIFF tags which had lead to several memory corruption bugs in libtiff library. Treat .TIFF files unknown to you like other sophisticated binaries: open them with a currently developed viewing software application, do not access the file in any way under elevated privilege, and if possible use sandboxing tool. Metadata might include make of scanning equipment used, software and times it was modified, author string, coordinates using EXIF/GPS or GeoTIFF information or other private tags defined by an organization. Before you publish your TIFF files strip metadata with 'exiftool -all= file.tiff' command and create a cleaned-up copy of your document. Also note that decompression bombs may lurk behind some tiny yet highly compressed TIFF images so services must restrict page count, memory consumption, width, height and/or tiles count.
History and versions
The creation of TIFF format goes to Aldus, which released this format in 1986 as a tool to interchange scanning results and desktop publishing works between various computers and operating systems. TIFF version 5.0 released in 1988 helped to achieve stability of tags usage and general compressions in emerging desk top publication. Version 6.0 published in 1992 is actually the most popular today standard of the TIFF classic. Adobe purchased Aldus in 1994 and acquired TIFF documents, Techinal Note as well and advice about the registered tags for it. GeoTIFF came out in the middle of 1990s with the release year of GeoTIFF 1.0 conventionally taken to be 1995 when adding of geographic coordinates and map projections were implemented into regular TIFF files. TIFF was standardized for Internet facsimile transfer by IETF in the end of 1990-s and begining of 2000-s as TIFF/FX, and the related standards are defined by RFC 2301, followed by updates in 2004 (RFC 3949, and RFC 3950). TIFF/EP got ISO 12234-2 certification and standardisation in 2001 with influence to digital camera raws and DNG workflow. BigTIFF emerged in the end of 2000s decade with libtiff 4.x support as big (>4GB) TIFF files format extension.
Related formats
The .TIF filename extension belongs to the TIFF format like .TIFF does as well. Though .TIFF is seen less frequently on Windows OS, any one of the two file extensions can represent similar kinds of images (classic TIFF and BigTIFF).
As the .PNG format supports transparency perfectly and is designed specially for use on the web without lossy compression, still, it cannot be used where multi-page capabilities of TIFF and fax formats are required along with support of CMYK color space or big size files. JPEG (.JPG/.JPEG format), on contrary to PDF and BMP is much lighter especially with photographs yet not a format for scanning.
.PDF file extension would be the optimal one for scanned texts containing lots of text in addition to graphic images, while TIFF would serve as an optimal raster format or as a holder of raw graphic files for some time. On the contrary to ordinary formats .TIF/.TIFF .DNG is built on TIFF/EP and is intended for use with camera-sensor data. .JPG/.JPEG are smaller files but lack multi-purpose capabilities like archiving.
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