File Formats: TIFF and BigTIFF (Tagged Image File Format)

TIFF and BigTIFF (Tagged Image File Format)

TIFF is a tag-based file format designed to promote universal interchanges of digital image data. Because TIFF files do not have a single way to store image data, there are many versions of TIFF. LEADTOOLS supports the most common TIFF formats. The usual file extension is TIFF for single-image files, and MPT for multipage files (which can contain many images). TIFF files can contain many comment fields of various types. Use the ReadComment method to read comments in an existing file. Before writing a file, use the Comments property to set an array of comments to be saved in the file.

TIFF files use 32-bit offsets, so they are limited to 4GB. A newer version of this file format, BigTIFF, uses 64-bit offsets and can create files bigger than 4GB. Not all TIFF readers support BigTIFF files. TIFF and BigTIFF pages cannot be mixed in the same file: all the pages in the file must be either TIFF or BigTIFF. However, you can use CompactFile to convert between TIFF and BigTIFF files without recompressing the image data.

BigTIFF and TIFF files have the same capabilities. For simplicity, for the rest of this document "TIFF" will refer to both TIFF and BigTIFF files.

The CompactFile method lets you compact TIFF files. It also lets you copy or extract one or more pages from a TIFF file and copy them without recompression to another TIFF file.

To determine whether a file is a TIFF file or a BigTIFF file, call Leadtools.Codecs.CodecsTiffImageInfo.IsBigTiff. If the file is a BigTiff file the call will return true; if the call returns false the file is a TIFF file.

To save a file as a BigTIFF file, set Leadtools.Codecs.CodecsTiffSaveOptions.BigTiff to true before saving. Saving a file with Leadtools.Codecs.CodecsTiffSaveOptions.BigTiff set to false results in the file being saved as a TIFF file. The default value is false (TIFF file format).

TIFF files can contain many comment fields of various types. You can use the ReadComment method to read comments in an existing file. Before writing a file, use the Comments property to set an array of comments to be saved in the file.

LEAD supports loading and saving multi-page files in this format.

LEADTOOLS can read and write TIFF files that use RGB, CMYK, or YCbCr color space. LEADTOOLS can also read and write files with PackBits compression.

LEADTOOLS can also read and write files with Lossless JPEG compression for 8-bit, 12-bit, and 16-bit grayscale and 24-bit color spaces.

You can read and write 12-bit grayscale. (Document/Medical toolkits only)

Regions are saved automatically inside TIFF files. For more information, refer to Saving a Region. Note, however, that the ability to save a region inside a TIFF file must be unlocked, which requires a Document Imaging or Medical Imaging toolkit.

Only TIFF and DICOM file formats are capable of saving images that have been window-leveled. Images can be window-leveled by using WindowLevel and specifying RasterWindowLevelMode.PaintAndProcessing for the flags parameter or by loading an image from a file format that supports window-leveling. If a window-leveled image is saved as any other file format, the image data will be converted before being saved. For more information, refer to Saving Window-Leveled Images.

The file constants associated with this file format are:

The LEADTOOLS WinRT SDK supports loading and saving both the TIFF and the BigTIFF formats. However, it does not support the high-level CompactFile method.

The LEADTOOLS Android SDK supports the TIFF format.

Required DLL: Leadtools.Codecs.Tif.Dll. For a listing of the exact DLLs needed, based on the toolkit version, refer to Files To Be Included With Your Application.

For loading or saving CMYK files or LAB color space files, you will also need Leadtools.ColorConversion.dll. Related Formats: CMP - LEAD Compressed, CMP - LEAD 1-Bit Format, EXIF - Exif Formats, JPG - JPEG Compressed, JP2 - JPEG 2000 Compressed, TIFX - Xerox Internet Fax File Format, LEADTOOLS ABC Compression.