thecompressjpeg

What is a TIFF file?

Less a format than a container that can hold almost anything. That flexibility is why print and archiving still rely on it, and why the files are enormous.

TIFF at a glance

Extensions
.tif, .tiff
Introduced
1986 by Aldus, now maintained by Adobe.
What it is
A tagged container. Compression, colour and layout are all options within it.
Compression
None, LZW, ZIP, PackBits or even JPEG — the file decides.
Colour
RGB, CMYK, greyscale, Lab. Up to 32 bits per channel.
Multi-page
Yes — one file can hold many images, used heavily in scanning.
Browser support
None. No mainstream browser displays TIFF.
On this site
Not supported — browsers cannot decode it.

Understanding TIFF

A container, not a codec

Most image formats specify how the data is compressed. TIFF does not — it specifies how to describe an image using tags, and leaves nearly everything else open.

A TIFF can be uncompressed, LZW-compressed, ZIP-compressed, PackBits-compressed or even hold JPEG data. It can be RGB, CMYK, greyscale or Lab; 8, 16 or 32 bits per channel; one page or hundreds; with or without alpha; in either byte order.

This is why "is TIFF lossless?" has no single answer. Usually yes, because it is usually uncompressed or LZW — but a JPEG-in-TIFF is not. You have to look at the specific file.

Why it persists in print and archiving

Its flexibility is exactly what those fields need.

CMYK support means a print master can be stored in the colour space the press actually uses, rather than being converted on the way in and out.

High bit depth preserves editing headroom that 8-bit formats discard.

Multi-page makes a scanned twenty-page document one file rather than twenty.

Lossless by default means an archival copy is genuinely the original, with no generation loss ever accumulating.

Longevity. The specification has been stable for decades and is exhaustively documented, which matters when a file must still open in fifty years.

Why the files are so large

Most TIFFs in circulation are uncompressed or LZW-compressed, and neither discards anything.

An uncompressed 4000 × 3000 RGB image is about 34 MB by simple arithmetic — three bytes per pixel, twelve million pixels. At 16 bits per channel it doubles. LZW helps on flat content and does almost nothing on photographs, for the same reason PNG does not.

That is not a flaw. A print master or an archival scan is supposed to be large; it is holding everything. The mistake is treating a TIFF as a delivery format.

When to convert, and when not to

Putting it on a website
Convert. Browsers cannot display TIFF at all. Use JPEG or WebP, sized for the layout.
Emailing it
Convert. A multi-megabyte TIFF that the recipient may not be able to open helps nobody.
Sending to a printer
Keep it, if that is what they asked for. It is the right format for the job.
Archiving a scan
Keep it. Lossless and stable is the whole point.
Editing
Keep it, or use your editor's own format. High bit depth and no generation loss are what you want mid-workflow.

The rule is the usual one: keep the master, deliver a derivative.

Why there is no TIFF tool here

No mainstream browser decodes TIFF, and these tools use the browser's own codecs. Dropping a TIFF into a canvas produces nothing.

Supporting it would mean shipping a WebAssembly decoder capable of handling the format's many variants — a substantial amount of code for a format that is, by design, not a web format. ImageMagick, Photoshop, GIMP and Preview all convert TIFF properly and are the right tools for it.

Try it yourself

Everything below runs in your browser, so you can test any of this on your own files without uploading them.

  • Compress JPEG

    Shrink JPG and JPEG photographs with a quality slider or an exact target size.

    Open the tool

  • Resize image

    By pixels or percentage, aspect ratio locked, across a whole batch.

    Open the tool

  • Compress PNG

    Lossless by default, with transparency carried through untouched.

    Open the tool

  • JPG to PDF

    Combine images into one PDF, reorder the pages, set paper size and margin.

    Open the tool

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Every answer below is present in the page source, expanded, so it can be read without opening anything.

Is TIFF lossless?

Usually, but not necessarily — TIFF is a container and the compression is a choice within it. Uncompressed and LZW TIFFs are lossless; a TIFF holding JPEG data is not. You have to check the specific file.

Why are TIFF files so big?

Because most are uncompressed or LZW-compressed, and neither discards anything. A 4000 × 3000 RGB image is about 34 MB of raw pixels before any container overhead, and 16-bit files double that. For a print master or archive that is correct behaviour.

Can browsers display TIFF?

No. No mainstream browser supports it, which is why a TIFF on a web page shows as a broken image or triggers a download. Convert to JPEG or WebP for anything going online.

Should I convert my TIFFs to JPEG?

Convert copies for sharing and web use, and keep the TIFFs as masters. Converting the originals discards the high bit depth, the CMYK data and the lossless guarantee that made them worth having.

Is TIFF better than PNG?

For print and archiving, yes — CMYK, higher bit depth and multi-page support are things PNG cannot do. For the web, PNG wins outright, because browsers display it and TIFF files are much larger.

Why can't I compress a TIFF on this site?

Because browsers cannot decode it. These tools use the browser's own codecs, so a TIFF page would simply fail. Use ImageMagick, Photoshop, GIMP or Preview, all of which handle TIFF properly.

From the blog

Related reading

Longer, more practical guides from the blog.

  • Image Formats

    PNG vs JPEG: When to Use Each, With the File Sizes to Prove It

    PNG stored the same photograph in 1274.1 KB where JPEG needed 67.5 KB — nineteen times larger. On a flat graphic PNG won. On a smooth gradient PNG lost to JPEG by a factor of two, which surprises most people.

    9 min read

  • Practical Guides

    How to Compress Images for a Website Without Wrecking Them

    Resize before you compress. Measured on one photograph: half the width at quality 80 produced a 16.4 KB file, while full width at quality 40 produced 20.6 KB and looked far worse. The order of operations matters more than the settings.

    8 min read

  • Image Compression

    JPEG Quality Settings Explained: What the Number Actually Means

    Quality 80 is not 80% of anything. It is an index into a quantisation table. Measured on one photograph: dropping from 100 to 90 removes 77% of the file and 4.2 dB of fidelity; dropping from 40 to 30 removes 17% and costs almost as much.

    8 min read