Tagged Image File Format
Tagged Image File Format (also known as TIFF) is a container format for storing images, including photographs and line art. It is now under the control of Adobe. Originally created by the company Aldus[1] for use with what was then called "desktop publishing," TIFF is a popular format for color and black and white images. The TIFF format is widely supported by image-manipulation applications, by publishing and page layout applications, by scanning, faxing, word processing, optical character recognition and other applications. [2] Adobe Systems, which acquired Aldus, now holds the copyright to the TIFF specification. TIFF has not had a major update since 1992, though several Aldus/Adobe technical notes have been published with minor extensions to the format, and several specifications, including TIFF/EP, have been based on the TIFF 6.0 specification.
| Filename extension | .tiff, .tif |
|---|---|
| Internet media type | image/tiff, image/tiff-fx |
| Type code | TIFF |
| Uniform Type Identifier (UTI) | public.tiff |
| Developed by | Aldus, now Adobe Systems |
| Type of format | Image file formats |
| Extended to | Exif, DCF, TIFF/EP |
References
- ↑ Versions 4 and 5 of the TIFF specification included the sentence "This memorandum has been prepared jointly by Aldus and Microsoft in conjunction with leading scanner and printer manufacturers"; there was a TIFF co-marketing and developer support effort with Microsoft during this time, though Microsoft was not a technical contributor to the specification. Version 6 (1992) of the TIFF specification dropped the Microsoft reference. TIFF Revision 5.0 TIFF Revision 6.0 Archived 2012-07-03 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ TIFF was chosen as the native format for raster graphics in the NeXTstep operating system; this TIFF support carried over into Mac OS X.
Other websites
- Adobe TIFF Resources page Archived 2006-06-15 at the Wayback Machine: Adobe links to the specification and main TIFF resources
- LibTIFF Home Page Archived 2004-09-16 at the Wayback Machine: Widely used library used for reading and writing TIFF files as well as TIFF file processing command line tools
- TIFF File Format FAQ and TIFF Tag Reference: Everything you always wanted to know about the TIFF File Format but were afraid to ask
- The BigTIFF File Format Proposal: Breaking the 4 gigabyte boundary
- TIFF description at Digital Preservation (The Library of Congress)
- TIFF Revision 4.0: Specification for revision 4.0, in HTML (warning: for historical purposes only, the TIFF 6.0 spec contains the full 4.0 revision)
- TIFF Revision 5.0: 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 6.0Archived 2012-07-03 at the Wayback Machine: 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 link to Adobe TIFF Resources)
- TIFF Central Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine More TIFF links and information.
