Can someone explain .tiff files?

[john70t]

The Michigan state website uses the .tiff image format for their online corporate look-up.
The USPTO (fed patent office) uses the same.

I thought the .TIFF format was just a type of non-compressed image file, but neither Firefox nor IE will display it without installing a pluggin.
Odd.
I had tried downloading "AlternaTIFF" again but apparently it didn't work with Win7 (it had worked before on the XP computer).

The other pluggin available was "From DOC to PDF", a google product, which wanted to make "Ask dotcom" the default homepage and default search engine and all that integrated browser crap.
(cue AOL/Facebook World II, the redux.)
Google can keep their own prying spying little eyes to themselves, thank you.
I declined, but now an unwanted "Ask dotcom" button appears as a tab in the upper right corner of IE 11.

With that pluggin there is no menu option to copy/save the picture to the HD.
WTF???

Is .TIFF some sort of proprietary format?
If so, then why are governments using something which a single company owns?

[GH85Carrera]

Tiff is Tagged Image File Format. It has been around way longer than almost anything else. Long before the compressed files of today. Windows 7 sees it OK with picture viewer.

Heck even Microsoft Paint will open it.

Are you just trying to see the file or do something with it?

[john70t]

That's what I thought, but it won't display on either browser without a pluggin.

Just wondering if there was a special reason.

[stomachmonkey]

Ni one should be uploading tiffs for the general public unless it's an image file.

Tiff can be uncompressed or compressed, LZW.

A tiff can also be flat or layered. If layered and your image editing app is basic / rudimentary it wont understand the layers.

There is also a byte order for Windows vs OSX although that really makes no difference anymore. It really has to do more with OS specific apps than the OS.

Tiff is not a format that browsers can display.

I doubt that the images were loaded as tiff by mistake. I can see one or two as an accident but if everything is a tiff then they had a reason, like the files are layered.

Get yourself a copy of The GIMP. GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program

Free open source cross platform alternative to Photoshop.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by john70t

Is .TIFF some sort of proprietary format?
If so, then why are governments using something which a single company owns?

The tiff is one of the first universal, high resolution image file formats. It is in use by organizations that adopted electronic imaging early, when the tiff was about the only hi-res game in town. But it is practically useless for browsers, where compressed images (jpgs) work just fine.
Try looking for an "export" option on your plug-ins. This will let you save in a different format like a jpg.

[VFR750]

All of which is just complete fail on the browser folks. TIFF files existed long ago. So it wasn't like they showed up late to the party.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by VFR750

All of which is just complete fail on the browser folks. TIFF files existed long ago. So it wasn't like they showed up late to the party.

Yes, but TIFFS are big files and the internet guys didn't want to encourage people to use them. An innocent tiff could clog up your dial-up connection for many minutes. Now that sites like this one stores photos, they don't want to waste their space on useless data.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

Yes, but TIFFS are big files and the internet guys didn't want to encourage people to use them. An innocent tiff could clog up your dial-up connection for many minutes. Now that sites like this one stores photos, they don't want to waste their space on useless data.

And tiff's are most common in image editing where CMYK is your preferred color space for color correction vs RGB.

RGB has a much wider and richer gamut, much of which can not be replicated in offset CMYK printing. Bright vibrant colors get muted dulled.

Modern browsers can display CMYK but there is no reason to do so as RGB is the format your monitor uses. You gain nothing and potentially lose quality and performance.

[Holger]

A normal TIFF-file should be opened with a standard program in Windows when double-clicking it.

Are you saying the sites are using TIFF as webgrahics in the websites? Or did I understand wrong?
If those images cannot be opened, then try to rename them to .jpg or .png or .gif. Files contain a "header" which describes what they are. But it may confuse browsers if the extension is .tif and the header says .jpg

[john70t]

Originally Posted by Holger

Are you saying the sites are using TIFF as webgrahics in the websites? Or did I understand wrong?

The USPTO has been using the .TIFF format to archive patent filing information for a very long time.
Current browsers don't support .TIFF.
Why? I don't know.

Any small business american trying to research a potential idea must depend on a Google-brand pluggin to access a federal government website.
That's a national problem.

I experienced the same with the Michigan corporate look-up.

Public records .

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

Get yourself a copy of The GIMP. GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program

Free open source cross platform alternative to Photoshop.

Paint.net is also a decent and very easy program for accessing TIFF files.

The link below will download the paint.net install file

http://www.dotpdn.com/files/paint.net.4.0.5.install.zip

[john70t]

GIMP and paint.net look like good resources for handling a file.
Thank you.

I'm still trying to understand why several modern browsers and government websites don't recognize a format older than the alligator.

And why a Google product doesn't allow capturing and permanently saving public archives.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by john70t

GIMP and paint.net look like good resources for handling a file.
Thank you.

I'm still trying to understand why several modern browsers and government websites don't recognize a format older than the alligator.

And why a Google product doesn't allow capturing and permanently saving public archives.

tiff is simply not a format that needs to be supported for in browser display. It adds unnecessary complexity.

You should simply save the file locally and open in the appropriate app.

With respect to google, based on the changes they've made to google docs it's obvious they are trying to lock us into the eco system. Last year they made a change which makes it next to impossible to pull images embedded in docs.

They want you to work online so they make working locally harder.

[GH85Carrera]

The only reason for the government to use Tiff files is the plain vanilla tiff file is an uncompressed loss-less image storage file format. Later versions of Tiff added LZW and JPEG compression as part of the format options. While LZW is loss-less it is very slow.

We store many many terabytes of scanned aerial photographic negatives and they will not lose any detail from compression at all. There are many "flavors" of Tiff and not all of them will open in conventional programs. I suspect what the government stores is a one bit tiff with no grays. The pixel is either black or white and it is great for long term archival storage of drawings or documents.

The government will continue to use it and not change because it has always done it that way and helping the end user is not something they care anything about.

Try to deal with the national archives. Try to order an aerial image. You can't call them or email then, they only deal with a FAX or a paper letter. Really. It might take a month to receive a reply, and it will have no real helpful information.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

....The pixel is either black or white and it is great for long term archival storage of drawings or documents....

Bitmap, you can run it through a processor and come out the other side with an editable eps vector although these days you can do that with full color raster files but that's no reason to change the format.