Convert TIFF to PDF

TIFF is the format of scanners, fax servers, document management systems and archives: it is lossless and one file can hold many pages. The catch is that web browsers don't display it, many phones and email apps don't either, and most upload forms ask for PDF. After converting TIFF to PDF, the document opens on any device and can be printed, attached, signed or merged with other files.

You may come across TIFFs like these: documents saved by an office scanner, faxes received by a fax server or online fax service, copies from libraries and archives, and medical, legal or engineering records exported by an older system. In a PDF, all pages have a consistent order and size, so the recipient doesn't have to flip through separate images.

TIFF is not one format but a container, and the images inside can be compressed in different ways. The ones you are most likely to meet with documents:

CCITT is the standard fax compression. It stores only black and white pixels (1-bit images), so text pages are remarkably small: a Letter page in Group 4 is often only 30 to 80 KB. That is why archives and document systems stored scanned records this way for decades, often as one multipage TIFF per case file.

Multipage files. When a TIFF contains several pages, the converter adds each one as a separate PDF page and labels them "(page 2)", "(page 3)" and so on in the list. You can drop several TIFFs at once; they follow each other in the order of the list, which you can change with the arrows.

Fax resolution. Fax pixels are not always square. A standard-resolution fax is 204 dpi across but only 98 dpi down. Displayed naively, the page is half as tall as it should be and the letters look squashed. The converter reads the horizontal and vertical resolution stored in the TIFF and stretches the page back to the correct proportions.

What happens to the file size? Pages are placed in the PDF losslessly, so the image is identical pixel for pixel. However, the PDF stores them with general lossless compression rather than 1-bit fax compression, so a CCITT page typically grows to 150 to 500 KB in the PDF. If that is too much, make the PDF smaller with Black and white PDF or Compress PDF.

Each image is centered on its page and scaled to fill the area inside the margins without distortion.

Be careful with Same size as the image. It calculates the page size from the pixel count at 96 pixels per inch, so a 300 dpi scan of a Letter page (2550 × 3300 pixels) becomes a page more than 26 inches wide. For scanned documents, always choose Letter or A4.

A fax server saved a 12-page incoming fax as one multipage TIFF with CCITT Group 3 compression in standard resolution (204 × 98 dpi). The file is 410 KB, but the image viewer on your laptop shows only the first page and the letters look oddly flat.

1. Drop the TIFF. Twelve items appear in the list, labelled "(page 1)" to "(page 12)".
2. Choose Letter as the page size and None as the margin; a fax already fills the page.
3. Click Create PDF.

The converter unpacks all 12 pages, corrects the 98 dpi vertical resolution so the letters have the right proportions, and places them on Letter pages. The PDF ends up around 2 to 4 MB. To email it, Compress PDF can take it below 1 MB while keeping the text readable. To search the fax, run OCR on it, which adds the recognized text as an invisible layer over each page.

If you control the scanner settings, a few choices give you a better and smaller PDF:

• Resolution: 200 to 300 dpi is enough for typed documents. 600 dpi means four times as much data but adds almost nothing to readability.
• Color mode: for black-and-white forms choose black and white (1-bit) or grayscale. Grayscale looks better on documents with stamps and signatures, because faint pen strokes don't disappear.
• Compression: CCITT Group 4 in black-and-white mode, LZW or Deflate in color or grayscale. Uncompressed TIFF is needlessly huge.
• One file, many pages: if the scanner allows it, save all pages of a document into one multipage TIFF. The order is then guaranteed, and this tool turns it into a PDF in one step.
• Crooked pages: pages fed through a document feeder often end up slightly skewed or upside down. Fix upside-down or sideways pages in the finished PDF with Rotate PDF.

No scanner? Your phone works too: Scan to PDF captures pages with the camera directly, without a detour through TIFF.

• Using image size for office documents. As explained above, high-resolution scans become enormous pages. Choose Letter or A4.
• Wrong order with several files. Files are added in the order you select them; check the list before you create the PDF.
• Expecting selectable text. The PDF pages remain images, so the text can't be selected. Run OCR if you need searchable text.
• Print-ready CMYK TIFFs. The browser converts colors to screen RGB, which can shift colors in print-ready artwork. For professional print jobs use dedicated prepress software.
• You only need one picture. If you need an image rather than a PDF, TIFF to JPG gives a small file that is easy to share (from the first page of a multipage TIFF).

Not every TIFF needs to become a PDF. To share a scanned photo or a single page as a picture, continue with the image tools, which also run without uploads: TIFF to JPG makes a small image that opens anywhere, and the image compressor makes it smaller still. PDF is the better choice when the order of pages matters, when the recipient will print it, or when an office specifically asks for PDF.

You can merge the new PDF with other documents, sign it, add page numbers, or rotate pages that were scanned upside down. If a page is not needed, for example a blank back side, delete it in one click.

The TIFF files are decoded in your browser by a built-in TIFF decoder, and the PDF is assembled there too. Nothing is uploaded to a server, so you can convert personal records, medical results and company documents safely. When you close the tab, the loaded pages disappear from the browser's memory; only the finished PDF remains in your downloads folder.