TIFF
Revision 6.0
Final — June 3, 1992
Author/Editor/Arbitrator: Steve Carlsen, Principal Engineer, Aldus Corporation
Aldus Developers Desk
Aldus Corporation
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Seattle, WA 98104-2871
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For a copy of the TIFF 6.0 specification, call (206) 628-6593.
If you have questions about the contents of this specification, see page 8.
160-640M
TIFF 6.0 Specification Final—June 3, 1992
2
Copyright
1986-1988, 1992 Aldus Corporation. Permission to copy without fee all or part
of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for
direct commercial advantage and the Aldus copyright notice appears. If the major-
ity of the document is copied or redistributed, it must be distributed verbatim,
without repagination or reformatting. To copy otherwise requires specific permis-
sion from the Aldus Corporation.
Licenses and Trademarks
Aldus and PageMaker are registered trademarks and TIFF is a trademark of Aldus
Corporation. Apple and Macintosh are registered trademarks of Apple Computer,
Inc. MS-DOS is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. UNIX is a
trademark of Bell Laboratories. CompuServe is a registered trademark of
CompuServe Inc. PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Inc. and
all references to PostScript in this document are references to either the PostScript
interpreter or language. Kodak and PhotoYCC are trademarks of Eastman Kodak
Company.
Rather than put a trademark symbol in every occurrence of other trademarked
names, we state that we are using the names only in an editorial fashion, and to the
benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trade-
mark.
Acknowledgments
This specification is the result of much hard work by many people.
Some of the sections in Part 2 were written by a number of outside contributors:
Ed Beeman, Hewlett Packard
Nancy Cam, Silicon Graphics
Dennis Hamilton, Xerox
Eric Hamilton, C-Cube
Sam Leffler, Silicon Graphics
Chris and Dan Sears
Other primary reviewers and TAC meeting participants include representatives
from Apple, Camex, Crosfield, Digital Optics Limited, Frame, IBM, Interleaf,
Island Graphics, Kodak, Linotype-Hell, Quark, Sun Microsystems, Time Arts,
US West, and Wang. Many thanks to all for lending their time and talents to this
effort.
No document this large can completely satisfy everyone, but we have all worked
hard to strike an effective balance between power and simplicity, between formal-
ity and approachability, and between flexibility and constraints.
Production Notes
This document was created electronically using Aldus PageMaker
4.2.
TIFF 6.0 Specification Final—June 3, 1992
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Contents
Introduction ....................................................................................................................4
About this Specification ......................................................................4
Revision Notes .....................................................................................6
TIFF Administration .............................................................................8
Information and Support.........................................................................8
Private Fields and Values.......................................................................8
Submitting a Proposal ............................................................................9
The TIFF Advisory Committee ...............................................................9
Other TIFF Extensions ...........................................................................9
Part 1: Baseline TIFF....................................................................................................11
Section 1: Notation ............................................................................12
Section 2: TIFF Structure...................................................................13
Section 3: Bilevel Images ..................................................................17
Section 4: Grayscale Images ............................................................22
Section 5: Palette-color Images ........................................................23
Section 6: RGB Full Color Images ....................................................24
Section 7: Additional Baseline TIFF Requirements ........................26
Section 8: Baseline Field Reference Guide .....................................28
Section 9: PackBits Compression ....................................................42
Section 10: Modified Huffman Compression...................................43
Part 2: TIFF Extensions ..............................................................................................48
Section 11: CCITT Bilevel Encodings ..............................................49
Section 12: Document Storage and Retrieval..................................55
Section 13: LZW Compression .........................................................57
Section 14: Differencing Predictor ...................................................64
Section 15: Tiled Images ...................................................................66
Section 16: CMYK Images .................................................................69
Section 17: HalftoneHints..................................................................72
Section 18: Associated Alpha Handling...........................................77
Section 19: Data Sample Format ......................................................80
Section 20: RGB Image Colorimetry ................................................82
Section 21: YCbCr Images ................................................................89
Section 22: JPEG Compression .......................................................95
Section 23: CIE L*a*b* Images ........................................................110
Part 3: Appendices....................................................................................................116
Appendix A: TIFF Tags Sorted by Number ....................................117
Appendix B: Operating System Considerations ...........................119
Index ............................................................................................................................120
TIFF 6.0 Specification Final—June 3, 1992
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Introduction
About this Specification
This document describes TIFF, a tag-based file format for storing and interchang-
ing raster images.
History
The first version of the TIFF specification was published by Aldus Corporation in
the fall of 1986, after a series of meetings with various scanner manufacturers and
software developers. It did not have a revision number but should have been la-
beled Revision 3.0 since there were two major earlier draft releases.
Revision 4.0 contained mostly minor enhancements and was released in April
1987. Revision 5.0, released in October 1988, added support for palette color
images and LZW compression.
Scope
TIFF describes image data that typically comes from scanners, frame grabbers,
and paint- and photo-retouching programs.
TIFF is not a printer language or page description language. The purpose of TIFF
is to describe and store raster image data.
A primary goal of TIFF is to provide a rich environment within which applica-
tions can exchange image data. This richness is required to take advantage of the
varying capabilities of scanners and other imaging devices.
Though TIFF is a rich format, it can easily be used for simple scanners and appli-
cations as well because the number of required fields is small.
TIFF will be enhanced on a continuing basis as new imaging needs arise. A high
priority has been given to structuring TIFF so that future enhancements can be
added without causing unnecessary hardship to developers.
TIFF 6.0 Specification Final—June 3, 1992
5
Features
• TIFF is capable of describing bilevel, grayscale, palette-color, and full-color
image data in several color spaces.
• TIFF includes a number of compression schemes that allow developers to
choose the best space or time tradeoff for their applications.
• TIFF is not tied to specific scanners, printers, or computer display hardware.
• TIFF is portable. It does not favor particular operating systems, file systems,
compilers, or processors.
• TIFF is designed to be extensible—to evolve gracefully as new needs arise.
• TIFF allows the inclusion of an unlimited amount of private or special-purpose
information.
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