RFC 2302 (rfc2302) - Page 2 of 8
Tag Image File Format (TIFF) - image/tiff MIME Sub-type Registration
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 2302 TIFF March 1998
Adobe Developers Association
Adobe Systems Incorporated
345 Park Avenue
San Jose, CA 95110-2704
Phone: +1-408-536-6000
Fax: +1-408-537-6000
A copy of this specification can also be found in:
ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/devrelations/devtechnotes/pdffiles/
tiff6.pdf
While a brief scope and feature description is provided in this
section as background information, the reader is directed to the
original TIFF specification [TIFF] to obtain complete feature and
technical details.
2.1 TIFF 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 applications 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
applications as well because the number of required fields is small.
2.2 TIFF Features
Some of the features of TIFF (from [TIFF]) are:
- 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 designed to be extensible and to evolve gracefully as new
needs arise.
- TIFF allows the inclusion of an unlimited amount of private or
special-purpose information.
Parsons, et. al. Standards Track