What is a TIFF file?
TIFF is a flexible raster container from 1986, now maintained by Adobe, that stores images as a set of tagged fields describing size, colour, compression and metadata. It can hold several pages in one file, 16-bit channels, CMYK colour, layers and either no compression, lossless LZW or ZIP, or JPEG compression. Scanners, fax software, publishing and archives use it as a master format.
That flexibility makes TIFF poorly suited to the web: browsers do not display it, files are large, and a program may support only a subset of the many variants. Most people meet TIFF as a multi-page scan or as a print-ready file from a designer, and convert it to PDF or JPG to share it.
When TIFF is the right choice
Strengths
- Lossless master copies for scans, archives and print production
- Multiple pages, CMYK, 16-bit colour and layers in one file
- Preferred by scanners, fax and document-management systems
Limitations
- Large files; browsers and many apps do not open it
- Many variants: not every program reads every TIFF
- Overkill for everyday sharing of photos or screenshots
How to open a TIFF file
Windows Photos, macOS Preview, Photoshop, GIMP and IrfanView open TIFF, including multi-page files; browsers do not. For a scan that other people must read, TIFF to PDF keeps every page in one document that opens anywhere.
How to convert a TIFF file
TIFF to PDF is the natural route for multi-page scans; TIFF to JPG shrinks photos for e-mail and the web, TIFF to PNG keeps a lossless copy that browsers show. To make a scanned TIFF searchable, run OCR on the PDF afterwards with OCR PDF.