Convert to and from the professional TIFF image format
Unlike JPEGs which permanently throw away microscopic visual details to save hard drive space (Lossy Compression), TIFF files are usually compressed using algorithms that preserve every single byte (Lossless).
This makes TIFF the standard for print-ready graphics, medical imaging, and archival document scanning.
TIFF files typically use LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welch) compression to save space without losing data.
Imagine an image with a massive solid blue sky. Instead of writing "Blue, Blue, Blue, Blue" a thousand times in the file, the LZW algorithm creates a dictionary. It assigns a short code (like #1) to the pattern "Blue, Blue", and then an even shorter code for larger blocks of identical colors.
When this tool decodes your TIFF, it reads these shorthand dictionary codes, rebuilds the original dictionary in your browser's RAM, and mathematically reconstructs every single original pixel of the image exactly as it was scanned.
Because a heavy multi-layered TIFF can instantly consume gigabytes of RAM when decompressed, this decoding process is strictly isolated to prevent crashing your main browser tab.
Why are TIFF files usually much larger than JPEGs?
