TIFF Tools Overview

quad

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

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

tiffcmp

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.