Tagged Image File Format


Tagged Image File Format

(file format, graphics)(TIFF) A file format used forstill-image bitmaps, stored in tagged fields. Application programs can use the tags to accept or ignore fields,depending on their capabilities.

While TIFF was designed to be extensible, it lacked a core ofuseful functionality, so that most useful functions (e.g.lossless 24-bit colour) requires nonstandard, oftenredundant, extensions. The incompatibility of extensions hasled some to expand "TIFF" as "Thousands of Incompatible FileFormats".

Compare GIF, PNG, JPEG.