In an industry that prides itself on cutting-edge technology, why are so many people still using a file type that is archaic? Adobe owns the rights to the TIFF image file format and has not updated its specifications since 1991. That same year, the Internet was first opened for commercial use, the World Wide Web was introduced to the public and Linux was released. Clearly, technology has come a long way since 1991. So why, then, are firms still reviewing and producing in TIFF?  When PDFs are Web optimized/linearized, there isn’t a version of TIFF that can load faster over the Web, no matter if it’s single or multi page. The advantages to PDF over TIFF go on and on. PDFs themselves can also be text-searchable, unlike TIFF files, which have separate text files associated with them. Thanks to Adobe’s PostScript control language, PDFs print exactly as they’re viewable online. TIFF’s bitmap makeup makes for poor, pixilated images when printed. PDFs are also operating-system independent and can be loaded and viewed on any computer. PDFs are more innovative, efficient, and useful than TIFF files. If file types had expiration dates, TIFF would be as rotten as Jeffrey Dahmer (who, by the way, was arrested in 1991).

For more information about the advantages of PDF over TIFF, see the white paper.