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Open tiff. What is TIFF format, where is it used and how to open it

Hello, friends! In this article, we will get acquainted with the TIFF format. I will briefly tell you what kind of format it is, how to open tiff files and how to work with them. TIFF format(Tagged Image File Format) — format for bitmap images. A feature (at least for me) is that several images can be stored in one TIFF file. When viewing, you open one file and scroll through the pages (images / pictures) inside it. Personally, I have not used it yet, but at work I once encountered this format. 3 images were sent in one TIFF file. It turned out to be very convenient. Nothing will be lost and you need to send not 3 but 1 file. It's like files in an archive, but you don't need to extract them to view them.

The simplest solution is

Below, just above the control buttons, there are buttons for changing pages (images). You can conveniently open and view a TIFF file.

The rights to the TIFF format belong to Adobe, so most of the products of this giant open the TIFF format.

You can also open TIF files using freely distributed programs:

  1. FastStone Image Viewer
  2. IrfanView
  3. XnView

We will dwell on the latter in more detail, since we will use it in our work.

You can and should download from the official website http://www.xnview.com/en/xnview/#downloads

Go to the unpacked folder and run XnView.exe

In the security warning window, click "Run"

Closing Tip of the Day

Go to the menu "File > Open ..." and select the TIFF file.

If the file is multi-page, then an information window will appear with a hint on how to scroll through these same pages.

An open TIFF file in XnView looks like this. You can scroll through the pages using the Page UP and Page Down keys on the keyboard or the buttons in the toolbar shown in the figure below

In the window that opens, select the location of the file and set the name. Select TIF in the "File type" field and click "Save"

If you click the "Options" button, various compression options will be available. As I understand LZW - lossless compression. I don’t know who might need it during high-speed Internet and 64 GB flash drives.

When saving a JPG file in TIFF format, the size increased from 80 KB to 1 MB. More than an order of magnitude. When compressing a 10 MB multi-page TIFF file, the size was reduced by approximately 10%.

Creating a multi-page TIFF file?

We start XnView. Go to "Tools > Create Multipage File..."

In the window that opens, select the format: "TIFF Revision 6". Set the filename and location folder. Click "Add..." at the top.

Press the CTRL key to select files and click OK.

Files added. You can use the arrows to change their location in the TIFF file. The "Options" button opens a familiar window where you can select compression if necessary. Click "Create"

The file is created instantly.

In XnView, you can edit tiff file. Select the appropriate option in the menu "Tools > Multipage File"

In the window that opens, immediately check the box "High-quality thumbnail" for a more sane display of these thumbnails

Click "Add Image" and insert the desired image into the desired page of the TIFF file

Images can be swapped and deleted. When the changes are made, click "Apply" and save the updated multi-page file to the desired location.

Multipage TIFF development?

You have a multi-page TIFF file and need to split it into separate image files. Open it in XnView and follow the path

"Tools > Multipage File > Extract All to Folder..."

Select the folder and format of the files to be extracted. Click "OK"

After a couple of seconds, the files will be extracted to the specified folder

If you do not need to save all the files separately on the disk, you can select "Extract All"

TIF files are opened with special programs. There are 2 types of TIF formats, each of which is opened by different programs. To open the desired format type, study the file descriptions and download one of the suggested programs.

How to open TIF file

TIF extension (full. Tagged Image File Format) is a popular format for transferring graphic images among users. It is widely demanded for recognition of textual information, as well as when scanning graphics, tables, text.

TIF files are regularly used when sending/receiving a fax. But still, the main purpose of this extension is to work with graphic data.

Tagged File is copyrighted by Adobe Systems. It should be noted that a characteristic feature of the TIF format is the storage of graphic images with a large depth of color palette.

When generating the TIF format, the developers pursued the main goal - lossless graphics compression, however, today users have an additional opportunity to convert to a file with a lossy extension.

Thus, if you met the TIF format on your PC: you are dealing with a high-quality raster graphic image.

Programs for opening TIF files

To open and work with TIF format, you do not need to install specialized applications. Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Windows Photos, as well as CorelDRAW - this is just a small list of software that often comes with the installation of Windows.

Among the other, very common programs integrated to work with the TIF extension, we can note:

  • ACDSee (Windows OS);
  • XnView (Windows OS);
  • PhotoOnWeb (Windows OS);
  • Roxio Creator (Windows OS);
  • Apple Preview (Mac OS);
  • Roxio Toast (Mac OS);
  • Adobe Illustrator (Mac OS);
  • File Viewer for Android (Android OS);
  • Darktable (Linux OS).

Convert TIF to other formats

The TIF format is unpretentious for conversion to formats with a different extension. / , / - this is not even a complete list of extensions to which you can convert TIF.

The conversion process can be implemented using Canon Easy-PhotoPrint EX , Lizardtech DjVu Solo , Artweaver . These are the most popular programs used to translate TIF format.

But, as a rule, any graphics system capable of working with TIF has a built-in data converter.

Why exactly TIF and what are its advantages?

The main and indisputable advantage of TIF is its high image quality. If you are a fan of rich colors and high resolution graphics, the TIF extension is the perfect fit for you.

Geospatial image file compatible with the GeoTIFF format; Contains geospatial or map data embedded as tags in the file. Enables users to embed GIS data in a file without having to deviate from the Tagged Image File Format.

Because GeoTIFF files contain coordinates, GIS applications can display specific regions of a raster image for latitude and longitude coordinates.

A focus was drawn with the TIFF format. A colleague showed the file and asked how it could be inserted into a Word-a document. It seemed that it was so complicated, but the fact is that the TIFF file turned out to be two-page. There is such a useful feature in the TIFF format as multipage within one file.

Those. the file is inserted into the document Word-a, but only the first page, the second is not visible in any way. Regular options in Windows 7 "Open with" offers us MS Paint, MS Picture Manager and Windows Media Center. Neither in MS Paint nor in MS Picture Manager is our TIFF visible beyond the first page. Moreover, even the export operation from MS Picture Manager to JPEG does not give a second page! Microsoft joked with Windows Media Center.)


Uuuu, how everything is running then in Windows 7 with the TIFF format if more than one page. Only standard view and . And we need a file to insert into the document.

Possible solutions:

1 is to print not to paper, but to a file. I need to check if my printer supports this option.

2 is to perform OCR on the file. I checked on the machine in Fine Reader Hot Folder. Both pages of the file were recognized with a bang in two DOC format pages.

3- is to use a third party tool, since Windows 7 blundered.

For example:

  • FastStone Image Viewer - Free for non-commercial use since version 3.5. Has a built-in thumbnail file manager. It can also be used as an image manager.
  • AlternaTIFF is a browser add-on (plugin) designed to open and display TIFF files. Supports most popular browsers of the Windows OS family, starting with XP version.
  • XnView allows you to read about 500 formats (including multipage and animated formats like APNG, TIFF, GIF, ICO, etc.). XnView provides page-by-page export of the pages of a TIFF file.

That's it.

The Windows TIFF IFilter provides the ability to search for TIFF documents based on text content. When Windows loads a TIFF IFilter, it performs optical character recognition (OCR) processing TIFF images and then provides the resulting text for building a search index.

The Windows TIFF IFilter searches for those documents that contain clearly recognizable text (such as black text on a white background) and is less successful for documents that contain mixed content (such as non-standard fonts or text containing graphics). Low quality images and mixed languages ​​can negatively impact OCR processing. In this case, the quality of search results is reduced.

That's it. Windows 7 already knows how to search for the desired text in TIFF images. It remains to teach her to do the same in other formats.))

Currently, the method of presenting and transmitting information using images (infographics and other methods) is becoming more and more popular. The advantages of such provision of information include the fact that a person will need less time to understand the information than if it were presented in text form. And in connection with such an increase in the popularity of graphics, the number of file formats designed to work with it is increasing. Although the tif format has been around for a relatively long time (in 1986), few people know how to open a tif file. And in connection with the advent of mobile platforms, there are even more questions - after all, many need to open and work with such files on their smartphones and tablets, and for this you need to decide how it will be most convenient to open a tif file on android.

Description of the TIFF file format

TIFF files contain raster graphics - in some ways the format is similar to PDF

So, TIFF (short for English Tagged Image File Format) is a format designed to store bitmap graphics. It is popular when it is necessary to preserve images of high color depth.

It is actively used when scanning documents, in the process of sending faxes, text recognition, in printing. Has wide support in the environment of graphic applications. Supported in mobile platforms (Android and others). In Mac OS, support for TIFF came from the NeXTSTEP operating system, in which the format was chosen as the main graphic.

The format was originally developed jointly by Aldus Corporation and Microsoft for use in PostScript. Aldus Corporation was subsequently taken over by Adobe Systems, which currently owns all rights to the TIFF specifications.

In the first versions of the format, it only supported lossless compression. In the future, the possibility of lossy compression when using JPEG was added.

Remarkably, when stored, files of this format can have the extension both .tif and .tiff.

What programs work with TIFF files

Below is a small overview in which you can choose which program to open the TIFF file and work with it. As often happens, the software market has a wide range of utilities for opening and working with TIFF - both paid and free. In general, all the options considered will be able to work with tiff without any problems. Here are the most popular ones:

  • FastStone Image Viewer - Free for non-commercial use since version 3.5. Has a built-in thumbnail file manager. It can also be used as an image manager.
  • XnView allows you to read about 500 formats (including multi-page and animated formats like APNG, TIFF, GIF, ICO, etc..). Some formats may require plugins;
  • - the most popular graphic editor;
  • AlternaTIFF is a browser add-on (plugin) designed to open and display TIFF files. Supports most popular browsers of the Windows OS family, starting with XP.

Thus, when choosing a program to open and work with the tif format, there should be no problems - there are a sufficient number of free programs for this. If you are looking for how to open a multi-page tif file, choose the first, second or fourth option. The situation with mobile platforms is somewhat more interesting, which will be discussed below.

How to open tif file on android

In order to find a quality tiff file viewer for Android, many people have to install paid applications from . And although the description of many programs declares support for the tif format, in practice, not everyone can work normally with it:

Tiff was developed by Aldus Corporation in collaboration with Microsoft. Currently being developed by Adobe Systems. Tiff uses lossless compression, which is why it has become quite a popular format among photographers. Images can be any size and have any color palette. When saving an image in tiff format, you can specify to use LZV compression or not. Also tiff only contains bitmap data.

What free programs can open a tiff file?

  1. - a free image viewer, the closest analogue of the paid ACDSee. More than 20 different bitmap formats are supported. After the first launch, the program will scan the hard drive and display the directories in which the images are stored in the left window. Basic photo editing is supported - rotate, apply effects and filters, remove red eyes, change contrast. There is a converter that has a wonderful batch conversion function for converting a large number of images.
  2. IrfanView is a free image viewer and basic editing software. The interface is pretty simple. After launch, a window opens with thumbnails of files and folders, as in the standard Windows Explorer. Above the viewport is the editor panel, above it is the program menu. The utility supports more than 50 graphics formats. The functionality of the program is easy to expand with the help of modules that can be downloaded from the official website of the program.
  3. - a powerful utility for editing and viewing photos, the closest competitor to Adobe Photoshop, but unlike it, it is distributed free of charge. Like Photoshop from Adobe, Gimp works with layers, which allows you to create an image from other drawings. Standard functionality can be easily extended with plugins.

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