TIFF and AVIF image formats play vital roles in the digital space, each with benefits and drawbacks. As such, users must comprehensively understand TIFF vs. AVIF to choose the ideal format for a particular application wisely.
The article highlights and discusses the key features of AVIF and TIFF regarding structure, image quality, file sizes, performance, browser support, transparency, animation, compression methods, and storage requirements.
When is AVIF better than TIFF?
AVIF images are widely supported by major web browsers such as Opera, Safari, Edge, Samsung Internet, Firefox, Brave, and Chrome, while TIFF images are only supported by Safari and unsupported by other key browsers.
AVIF file extension is ideal for making images that support different advanced features suitable for most specialized applications and web browsers, such as gradients in movie posters, texts, and graphics. It uses highly efficient AV1 compression, producing smaller, web-responsive, high-quality images.
When is TIFF better than AVIF?
TIFF images offer multipage support, better color accuracy, and detailed and high-quality image archiving, while AVIF images support a Wide Color Range and High Dynamic Range among other color profiles. Hence, the TIFF file format is ideal for detailed, accurate, expert scanning, printing, and publishing.
TIFF file extension stores high-resolution data, including many color spaces and color depths, including 1-16-bit per channel. It hardly degrades during compression and supports multiple pages in a single file, allowing users to merge separate documents in a suitable package while upholding their formatting options.
TIFF versus AVIF Table Comparison
| Element | AVIF | TIFF |
| Transparency | Supports transparency. | Supports transparency. |
| File Size | Smaller files than TIFF files. | Larger files than AVIF files. |
| Image Quality | Wide color profile and high-quality images than TIFF. | High-quality images. |
| Performance | Smaller and loads faster online than TIFF. | Larger and loads slower online than AVIF. |
| Structure | Raster-based with nested boxes like File Type Box (ftyp) container, metadata, and real image data. | A raster graphics with Image File Header (IFH), image file directory (IFD), and the bitmap data. |
| Animation | Supports animations | Does not support animation |
| Storage | Smaller and requires less storage space than TIFF. | Larger and needs more storage space than AVIF. |
| Compression | Support lossless and lossy compression. | Supports lossless and lossy JPEG compression. |
| Browser Support | Wider web browser and platform support than TIFF. | Limited browser support compared to AVIF. |
Differences and similarities between AVIF and TIFF images
The technical features involving TIFF versus AVIF formats reveal similarities in transparency support and lossy and lossless compression methods. Conversely, the two formats differ in structure, image quality, browser support, file size, storage needs, web browser support, and performance.
Transparency
TIFF and AVIF formats have inherent support for transparency. The AVIF files support transparency through alpha channels. AVIF's transparent backgrounds allow transparency data to be stored and supported alongside the lossy and lossless data. It enables data transparency at different image levels and supports object representation in images with well-defined opacities.
Similarly, TIFF supports transparency, although the supported alpha channels hardly work in design. Its transparent backgrounds are incompatible with most web-based programs. As such, alpha channel transparency is rarely used in TIFF files and might not be supported by users' software. However, it allows adding alpha information by specifying more than three samples per pixel.
File Size
TIFF files are larger than AVIF files. TIFF stores multiple pages per file, and a single TIFF file can be 4GB, making multiple such files significantly larger at times, reaching 3 * 224 Tb. However, TIFF hardly uses efficient compression comparable to AVIF's AV1 video codec. Hence, AVIF is smaller than TIFF.
Image Quality
TIFF and AVIF are both high-quality image formats, but AVIF image quality goes a notch higher. AVIF supports 8-12-bit color depths per channel. It also supports multiple color sub-sampling, HDR, WCR, ICC profile, non-standard and standard color spaces, Rec 2020, sRGB, and Pro Photo RGB.
TIFF, on the other hand, stores high-resolution and detailed, high-quality information, including different color spaces, namely gray RGB, palette (indexed), grayscale, LAB, bi-level (white and black), and many color depths including 1-16-bit color depth per channel, which hardly degrades during compression.
Performance
The TIFF file format stores multiple pages in a single file, making it larger than the AVIF file type. However, AVIF's AV1 algorithms significantly reduce file sizes, resulting in smaller files with faster website loading times, fewer bytes usage, and less bandwidth costs than TIFF files.
Structure
TIFF and AVIF are raster-based formats, although they have varying structural designs; hence, they are difficult to compare. AVIF is an ordered form of nested boxes storing metadata and data. It has a File Type Box (ftyp) responsible for classifying the file and specifying the format version used at the top-lying container or box.
The AVIF ftyp container comprises additional boxes. The Item Properties Box (iprp), Item Location Box (iloc), and Media Data Box (mdat) have different metadata and real image information. The image metadata in an AVIF file is sequentially stored as compressed frames using AV1 codec encoding.
Conversely, TIFF supports a multilayer structure. Each value in the TIFF file is identified using a tag indicating the data type, including image width or height and the stored data format.
The tag and type are closely followed by the length of various values assigned to a particular tag. Each property, including the single-value properties, is stored in arrays. AVIFs allow different metadata for identical properties, where the image width can be saved using tag 0x0100 in a single-entry array.
Animation
AVIF file extension supports animation and live photos through its multilayer image storage sequence. The format is compatible with HIEF, allowing image sequences and elements to be created or used in animation or lively images. In contrast, TIFF files or images have no inherent support for animation.
TIFF is meant only for desktop publishing, GIS and mapping, artwork, printing, and photography, but not for creating animations. However, it supports multiple pages, which is ideal for storing distinct frames of animation sequences. TIFF is applicable in specific animation software to produce high-quality animated content.
Storage
TIFF and AVIF formats store lossy and lossless compressed image data. Besides, TIFF supports PackBits/ZIP compression. However, AVIF uses a more advanced and efficient AV1 video codec compression than TIFF, resulting in smaller files that require less storage space than TIFF files.
The storage period of AVIF and TIFF files depends on the storage conditions, the medium used, and the handling process. The formats' image data often last indefinitely when stored in the Cloud, File Systems, Hard Drives, Content Delivery Networks, Base64 Encoding, DVD±R, and Floppy Drives.
Compression
TIFF and AVIF use lossless and lossy compression, but TIFF further supports PackBits/ZIP compression. TIFF's LZW algorithms minimize file sizes by almost 6%, although the non-photo image sizes sometimes increase by 50% during lossless LZW compression.
TIFF's PackBits compression significantly reduces its files by 20%. It sometimes goes down to zero compression when handling non-photographic TIFF images. The format also supports lossy compression, where the table-based lookup algorithms remove unnecessary or duplicate image data and then compress the remaining components of the original file into a smaller file.
In contrast, AVIF's lossy method compresses image data in sequences using the AV1 algorithms in a HEIF container format. Like TIFF, part of the image data is deleted, resulting in smaller images than TIFF, albeit with a slight loss in image quality.
Lossless AVIF also sequentially reduces file data using the AV1 algorithm, but the resulting files are smaller than lossless TIFFs. Lossless AVIF preserves all image data and ensures higher-quality images are produced than lossless TIFFs. Hence, AVIF compression is more efficient than TIFF compression.
Browser Support
AVIF files enjoy wider browser support in different Operating Systems, platforms, and web browsers. The format is compatible and supported by almost all older and new web browsers: Samsung Internet, Discord, Opera, Edge, Vivaldi, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari.
Most Operating Systems, including Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, and macOS, support TIFF. However, it is supported by Apple Safari but is unsupported by Firefox, Edge, Chrome, IE, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, and Discord. Additional plug-ins or TIFF viewer software must be installed to view TIFF images on Chrome.
Converting AVIF to TIFF or TIFF to AVIF
Convertjack can easily convert AVIF to TIFF while preserving all image features. TIFF images are preferred because of their multipage support, detailed and high-quality image archiving, and better color accuracy.
Convertjack is the best TIFF to AVIF converter because of its wider browser support and free and excellent image format conversion rate. This leads to smaller, high-quality, broadly compatible, and user-friendly AVIF files that guarantee faster image loading times, better web user experience, and fewer storage needs.