TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)

Extensions: .tiff, .tif, .tf2, .tf8, .btf

Developer: Aldus and Microsoft

Owner: Adobe

Support

BSD-licensed: Yes

Export: Yes

Officially Supported Versions:

Reader: TiffReader (Source Code, Supported Metadata Fields)

Writer: TiffWriter (Source Code)

Sample Datasets:

We currently have:

Ratings

Pixels: 4 - Very Good

Metadata: 5 - Outstanding

Openness: 5 - Outstanding

Presence: 5 - Outstanding

Utility: 2 - Fair

Additional Information

Bio-Formats can also read BigTIFF files (TIFF files larger than 4 GB). Bio-Formats can save image stacks as TIFF or BigTIFF.

TIFF files written by ImageJ are also supported, including ImageJ TIFFs larger than 4GB. ImageJ TIFFs are detected based upon the text in the first IFD’s “ImageDescription” tag; this tag’s value is then used to determine Z, C, and T sizes as well as physical sizes and timestamps. For ImageJ TIFFs larger than 4GB, a single IFD is expected (instead of one IFD per image plane). The “ImageDescription” is used to determine the number of images, the pixel data for which are expected to be stored contiguously at the offset indicated in the sole IFD. This differs from standard TIFF and BigTIFF; if the “ImageDescription” tag is missing or invalid, only the first image will be read.