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
