What does the file extension .TIFF stand for?

The file extension .TIFF stands for Tagged Image File Format. TIFF is a raster-image format designed to store detailed bitmap images along with descriptive information, or “tags,” about how those images are organized.

A TIFF file can contain information such as image width, height, colour depth, compression method and the location of image data. It can store multiple images in one file, which is useful for scanned documents, multipage fax files and archival workflows.

The format was developed by Aldus Corporation with Microsoft and first released in 1986. Adobe later acquired Aldus and became the administrator of the TIFF specification. TIFF 6.0, released in 1992, remains the best-known version.

TIFF is widely used in photography, scanning, publishing, printing and digital preservation because it can preserve high image quality and support lossless compression. A common mix-up is confusing TIFF with TIF: .tif is simply a shorter filename extension for the same format, not a different file type.