TIFF to PNG

TIFF and PNG are both lossless, but only one of them is welcome on the web. Browsers do not display TIFF, many phones show only a gray icon for it, and online editors and CMSs usually reject it. PNG is lossless too and opens everywhere, which makes it the natural replacement when you want to share or publish a TIFF without degrading it.

Lossless in practice

When the TIFF stores 8 bits per channel, as most scans and exported graphics do, the PNG contains exactly the same pixel values. You can convert back and forth without any change. TIFFs with 16 or 32 bits per channel, common in high-end photography and scientific imaging, are reduced to 8 bits, because that is what browsers decode into. On screen the difference cannot be seen, but heavy color grading benefits from the extra depth, so keep the original TIFF as your master file.

Transparency and color models

Graphics exported as TIFF often carry an alpha channel. It is copied into the PNG, so cut-outs remain cut out. Grayscale TIFFs stay gray; black-and-white fax pages become black-and-white PNGs that are usually small. CMYK print files are converted to RGB, since PNG has no CMYK mode.

Multi-page TIFFs

A scanned document with several pages produces one PNG per page, numbered in order and packaged in a .zip. This is handy for importing pages into tools that work with single images, for example slide software or a website gallery. If you would rather keep all pages together, convert the TIFF to a PDF with TIFF to PDF.

File size expectations

PNG compresses graphics, diagrams and text pages very well, often better than the TIFF’s own LZW compression. Photographic scans, on the other hand, stay large because lossless formats cannot discard detail. If a scanned photo is destined for a website, consider TIFF to WebP or TIFF to JPG instead, or switch on the longest-side limit here to remove pixels that will never be seen.

Step by step

Drop one or more TIFF files, keep PNG selected and convert. Each file’s row shows the result’s size and dimensions, and a preview appears under the list. Download single files or everything as a .zip.

Typical uses

Designers receive TIFF artwork from print workflows and need it in a web project. Archivists publish scans of letters and maps. Researchers share microscope images in reports. In each case, PNG keeps the full quality of 8-bit images while making them viewable on any device. When you later need TIFF again, for example for a print shop, PNG to TIFF converts back losslessly and can combine several pages into one file.

Keeping the conversion faithful

A few checks make sure nothing unexpected happens. Compare the pixel dimensions in the result row with the original; they match unless you switched on the size limit. Look at a transparent area on the checkerboard preview to confirm the alpha channel came through. For scans of documents, zoom in on fine print: if it looks identical, the conversion is pixel-exact, as it should be for 8-bit files. For black-and-white fax pages, the PNG is often much smaller than you might expect, because long runs of white pixels compress extremely well.