What is a TIFF file?
TIFF — professional image format
What is it?
TIFF is the professional's image format: it preserves everything, with no loss whatsoever. It supports multiple pages within a single file, layers, precise color profiles, 16-bit-per-channel depth, and the CMYK mode used in commercial printing.
It is less a single format than a flexible container, able to hold compressed or uncompressed images depending on the need.
History & origin
Created in 1986 by Aldus — the publisher of PageMaker, later absorbed by Adobe — TIFF was meant to give scanner manufacturers a common standard at a time when their devices were mutually incompatible.
It has remained ever since the reference format for scanning, prepress work, and heritage archiving: libraries digitize their collections in TIFF.
Why it is useful
No loss, maximum quality, and support for multipage files and everything the professional print workflow demands.
It is the format of choice for archiving a scanned document you want to be able to use thirty years from now.
Limits & drawbacks
Enormous file sizes: a high-resolution A4 scan can easily exceed 100 MB.
Its very flexibility is a trap — there are so many variants that some TIFF files are rejected by software that claims to support the format. And web browsers won't display it at all.
Practical tips
Reserve TIFF for archiving and printing. For on-screen use or sending files, convert to JPEG or PNG: the file size will drop by a factor of twenty.
For a multi-page scanned document, converting to PDF is often more practical: a single file, readable everywhere, and far lighter.
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