TIFF Tools Overview

This software distribution comes with a small collection of programs for converting non-TIFF format images to TIFF and for manipulating and interrogating the contents of TIFF images. Several of these tools are useful in their own right. Many of them however are more intended to serve as programming examples for using the TIFF library.

Manual pages

• fax2ps
• fax2tiff
• pal2rgb
• ppm2tiff
• raw2tiff
• rgb2ycbcr
• thumbnail
• tiff2bw
• tiff2pdf
• tiff2ps
• tiff2rgba
• tiff2cmp
• tiffcp
• tiffcrop
• tiffdither
• tiffdump
• tiffgt
• tiffinfo
• tiffmedian
• tiffset
• tiffsplit

Device-dependent Programs

There are two device-dependent programs that serve as simple examples for writing programs to display and save TIFF images.

Device-dependent programs

Tool	Description
tiffgt	Display the contents of one or more TIFF images using OpenGL. The software makes extensive use of the TIFFRGBAImage facilities described elsewhere.

Device-independent Programs

The remaining programs should be device-independent:

Device-dependent programs

Tool	Description
fax2ps	Convert a Group 3- or Group 4- compressed TIFF to PostScript that is significantly more compressed than is generated by tiff2ps (unless tiff2ps writes PS Level II)
fax2tiff	Convert raw Group 3 or Group 4 facsimile data to TIFF
pal2rgb	Convert a Palette-style image to a full color RGB image by applying the colormap
ppm2tiff	A quick hack that converts 8-bit PPM format images to TIFF
raw2tiff	Create a TIFF file from raw data
rgb2ycbcr	Convert an RGB, grayscale, or bilevel TIFF image to a YCbCr TIFF image; it’s mainly provided for testing
thumbnail	Copy a bilevel TIFF to one that includes 8-bit greyscale “thumbnail images” for each page; it is provided as an example of how one might use the SubIFD tag (and the library support for it)
tiff2bw	A simple program to convert a color image to grayscale
tiff2pdf	Convert TIFF images to PDF
tiff2ps	Convert TIFF images to PostScript
tiff2rgba	Convert a TIFF image to RGBA color space
tiff2cmp	Compare the contents of two TIFF files (it does not check all the directory information, but does check all the data)
tiffcp	Copy, concatenate, and convert TIFF images (e.g. switching from Compression=5 to Compression=1)
tiffcrop	Provides selection of images from within one or more multi-image TIFF files, with orthogonal rotation, mirroring, cropping, and extraction of multiple sections and exporting to one or more files. It extends the functionality of tiffcp to support additional bit depths in strips and tiles and enhances the selection capabilities of tiffsplit. Bilevel images can be inverted and images may be split into segments to fit on multiple /pages/ (standard paper sizes), plus other functions described in the tiffcrop man page
tiffdither	Dither a b&w image into a bilevel image (suitable for use in creating fax files)
tiffdump	Display the verbatim contents of the TIFF directory in a file (it’s very useful for debugging bogus files that you may get from someone that claims they support TIFF)
tiffinfo	Display information about one or more TIFF files
tiffmedian	A version of Paul Heckbert’s median cut program that reads an RGB TIFF image, and creates a TIFF palette file as a result
tiffset	Set a field in a TIFF header
tiffsplit	Create one or more single-image files from a (possibly) multi-image file

Check out the manual pages for details about the above programs.