What is the TIFF to PDF Converter?
The TIFF to PDF Converter turns TIFF and TIF files into a single PDF. Drop one in, drop ten in, drop a multi-page TIFF that contains 47 scanned pages — all three work the same way. Each TIFF page becomes one PDF page sized to that page's dimensions. The output is one file you can email, attach to a form, drop into Slack, or hand to a lawyer.
TIFF is a great format for archival storage. It's lossless, it supports multi-page documents in a single file, and it's been the office-scanner default for thirty years. It's also a format most modern software refuses to display. Email previews won't show it. Slack won't preview it. Web upload forms typically reject it. Even Word treats it as a special case. The first thing most people need to do with a TIFF is turn it into a PDF.
The whole conversion runs in your browser. The TIFF decoder is utif — a pure-JavaScript library that handles uncompressed, LZW, PackBits, and Deflate compression. Each decoded page renders to a canvas, exports as JPG at 92% quality, and pdf-lib assembles the final PDF. Your files don't leave your machine. No upload step. No watermark. No surprise file-size cap.
Multi-page TIFF: the whole point
Most TIFF files come from places that produce multi-page documents: office scanners (one TIFF, N pages), fax machines (legacy but still common in healthcare, real estate, and government), and document archive systems. A scanned contract is rarely "one TIFF per page" — it's almost always "one TIFF containing all 12 pages."
This is where most generic image-to-PDF tools fail. They decode the first page of a multi-page TIFF and silently drop the rest. iLoveIMG converts one page. Convertio's TIFF handler is hit or miss on multi-page. Drop a 10-page scanned contract in and you get a 1-page PDF back. The 9 missing pages become your problem.
This tool reads every page. A 10-page TIFF gives you a 10-page PDF. A 50-page archival scan gives you a 50-page PDF. Page order is preserved exactly. If you drop in three multi-page TIFFs at once — say, three separate scans of three separate documents — each TIFF's internal page order is preserved, and the TIFFs themselves are stitched in the order you sequenced them.
The killer feature: multi-page TIFFs convert correctly. If you've been splitting them by hand or losing pages on other converters, that ends here.
How to use it
Four steps. No setup.
- Drop your TIFF or TIF files onto the page. Single-page and multi-page both work. Up to 50 MB per file, 200 MB combined.
- Reorder files with the arrow buttons. The order of files determines the order in the output PDF. Pages inside a single multi-page TIFF stay in their original order.
- Click "Convert to PDF." utif decodes each file; each decoded page becomes one PDF page sized to that page's dimensions. Progress shows per file.
- Click Download. Output is named after the first TIFF plus a count suffix:
scan-01.tiff + 2 othersbecomesscan-01-and-2-more.pdf.
Where TIFF actually comes from
Knowing the source helps explain why TIFF-to-PDF is a real problem worth solving and not just a Google-bait keyword.
| Source | What you typically get | Why TIFF and not PDF or JPG? |
|---|---|---|
| Office scanner (Xerox, Canon, Ricoh) | Multi-page TIFF, 200–600 DPI, LZW or PackBits compression | Default output of "scan to email" or "scan to folder" on most enterprise scanners since the 90s |
| Fax machine / fax-to-email gateway | Multi-page TIFF, low DPI (200×200 or 200×100), CCITT Group 4 compression | The TIFF spec was designed around fax. Group 4 packs bilevel scans aggressively. |
| Medical imaging archive | Single-page or multi-page TIFF, high bit depth, often uncompressed | Lossless quality required for diagnosis; DICOM is the other standard but TIFF is common for exports |
| Legal discovery / document archives | Multi-page TIFF, 300 DPI, mixed compression | Established archival format with broad tooling support; long-term readable |
| Photography (rare today) | Single-page TIFF, often uncompressed, large files | Lossless print workflows; mostly replaced by camera RAW or PSD |
The first two rows are the bulk of real traffic. If you're converting TIFF to PDF, you're almost certainly dealing with a scanned document — and almost certainly multi-page.
A worked example
Real numbers from a real case.
You scan a 6-page rental agreement on an office Xerox set to 300 DPI duplex. The scanner produces one multi-page TIFF, ≈ 8.4 MB total (LZW compressed). You need to email it to a property manager who's asked for PDF only.
- Drop the single TIFF onto the page. The file picker shows "1 file, 6 pages" once utif inspects it.
- Click convert. utif decodes all 6 pages; each renders to canvas; each exports as JPG at 92%; pdf-lib assembles a 6-page PDF.
- Time on a recent laptop: ≈ 4 seconds total (utif is fast; the canvas + JPG encode is the bottleneck).
- Output PDF size: ≈ 3.2 MB. Smaller than the source TIFF because JPG-at-92% is roughly 3x more space-efficient than LZW-compressed TIFF for grayscale scans of text.
- Output filename:
scan-and-5-more.pdf(the multi-page TIFF was namedscan.tiff). - Nothing uploaded. The property manager gets the PDF; nobody else gets a copy of your rental agreement.
The same job on iLovePDF or Sejda would have meant uploading 8.4 MB to their server, waiting in their queue, and trusting their retention policy. For a rental agreement with both parties' names, addresses, and signatures, that's a meaningful tradeoff to dodge.
Privacy: actually not uploaded
Most of the "free TIFF to PDF" results on Google are server-side converters. iLovePDF uploads. SmallPDF uploads. PDF24 uploads. Convertio uploads. CloudConvert uploads. Their retention windows range from "a few hours" to "until you delete it," and the privacy policies all caveat the basics — yes, we use third-party processors; yes, anonymized data may be retained.
For a meme image, this is fine. For a scanned contract, a tax form, a medical record, a court filing, a will, a divorce settlement, an HR document, a passport scan — it's worth not having any of that touch someone else's hardware. This tool runs the decoder (utif), the canvas conversion, and the PDF build all inside your browser tab. Network tab during convert: empty.
The same tools, the same speed, the same respect for everyone. No "premium plan" gates the multi-page TIFF handling. No "sign up to convert more than 2 files." Free is a fact.
The CCITT Group 4 limitation, honestly
The one thing this tool doesn't handle in v1 is CCITT Group 4 / Fax compression. That's the bilevel (black-and-white only) compression standard built specifically for fax transmission. If your TIFF was produced by a fax machine, a fax-to-email gateway, or some legacy scan-to-fax setups, there's a decent chance the file is CCITT-compressed.
utif's coverage of CCITT is incomplete, so a Group 4 TIFF will either decode incorrectly or fail to decode at all. The workaround is straightforward:
- Open the TIFF in an image editor that handles CCITT. macOS Preview, GIMP, IrfanView, Photoshop, and Acrobat Pro all do.
- Re-save as TIFF with a different compression — LZW, PackBits, Deflate, or uncompressed all work. File size will go up (Group 4 is very efficient for bilevel scans) but the new TIFF will decode here.
- Drop the re-saved TIFF in and convert.
This is annoying. We're tracking demand for a proper Group 4 decoder; if it's a real bottleneck for enough people, we'll add it. Until then, the re-save workaround takes about 30 seconds per file in macOS Preview (File → Export → uncheck "Group 4").
Limits and edge cases
A few honest constraints that come from running in a browser.
- 50 MB per TIFF, 200 MB combined. Multi-page scans at 300 DPI usually fit easily within this. Very large archival TIFFs (uncompressed multi-hundred-MB scans) won't fit — re-save at moderate DPI first, or split into per-page TIFFs and convert in batches.
- Color profiles are not preserved. The pipeline rasterizes through canvas, which uses the browser's sRGB. CMYK TIFFs (common from print workflows) get converted to RGB. If color accuracy matters for proofing or print, use a desktop tool that preserves the embedded ICC profile.
- BigTIFF and GeoTIFF aren't supported. BigTIFF (a variant for files over 4 GB) and GeoTIFF (TIFF with embedded geo-spatial metadata) are out of scope for v1. The geo metadata won't transfer; if your GeoTIFF is also a standard TIFF, the image content should convert correctly.
- Output is JPG-embedded, not lossless. Each TIFF page is encoded as JPG at 92% quality before embedding. That's the photo-PDF sweet spot — visually identical to the source, 3–5x smaller than embedding as PNG. If you genuinely need lossless, convert your TIFF to PNG in a desktop tool first, then use our PNG to PDF tool.
Related tools
For the rest of the document workflow:
- Image to PDF — the universal accepter. If your batch has TIFF plus other formats, this handles them all in one drop.
- PNG to PDF — for screenshots and lossless transparent images.
- JPG to PDF — for camera photos.
- HEIC to PDF — for iPhone photos.
Once you've made the PDF:
- PDF Merger — stitch your TIFF-converted PDF together with existing PDFs into one file.
- Compress PDF — shrink the result further if the recipient has a strict email size limit.
- Extract Text from PDF — if your TIFF is a scanned document and you need the text out. (OCR happens here.)
- Rotate PDF — for the inevitable sideways scan.
- Split PDF — if you need to break the multi-page output back into single-page files.
Frequently asked questions
Does this support multi-page TIFFs?
Yes — that's the whole point. Office scanners and fax machines often produce multi-page TIFFs (one file containing N pages). This tool decodes every page and adds each as a separate PDF page. A 10-page scanned TIFF becomes a 10-page PDF.
Why does TIFF need conversion in the first place?
TIFF is a great archival format — high quality, lossless compression options, multi-page support — but most consumer software and email clients won't display it natively. Word, Slack, email previews, web upload forms typically reject TIFF. Converting to PDF gives you a universally readable format with the same content.
Is my TIFF really not uploaded?
Yes. utif (the TIFF decoder) runs in your browser. PDF building uses pdf-lib in the same tab. Zero outbound requests during convert. Open your browser's Network tab during a conversion to verify.
What TIFF compression types are supported?
utif handles the common cases: uncompressed, LZW, PackBits, Deflate. It does NOT support CCITT Group 4 (the older fax compression for bilevel scans) in v1. If your TIFF won't decode, CCITT is the most likely cause. Workaround: open in macOS Preview, GIMP, or Photoshop and re-save without CCITT compression, then convert here.
Will the output preserve color profiles?
No — the pipeline rasterizes through canvas, which uses the browser's sRGB. CMYK TIFFs get converted to RGB. If color accuracy matters (proofing for print), use a desktop tool that preserves the embedded ICC profile.
What's the maximum file size?
50 MB per TIFF, 200 MB combined. Multi-page scans at moderate DPI fit easily within the cap. Very large archival TIFFs (uncompressed, multi-hundred-MB) won't — re-save at moderate DPI first, or split into per-page TIFFs and convert in batches.
Does the output PDF compress the images?
Yes — each TIFF page is encoded as JPG at 92% quality before embedding. Photo-PDF sweet spot: visually identical to the source, 3–5x smaller than embedding as PNG. If you need lossless, convert your TIFF to PNG first in a desktop tool and use our PNG to PDF tool.
What about BigTIFF or GeoTIFF?
Standard TIFF only in v1. BigTIFF (the variant for files over 4 GB) and GeoTIFF (TIFF with embedded geo-spatial metadata) aren't supported. The geo metadata won't transfer, but if your GeoTIFF is also a standard TIFF, the image content should convert.