TIFF to PDF Converter: Free Online Tools and How to Use Them

TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is a high-quality, lossless image format favored in medical imaging, legal document scanning, and professional photography. Converting TIFF files to PDF is common for sharing, archiving, and document management.

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Why TIFF Files Are Common in Business

• Medical imaging — DICOM systems often export as TIFF
• Legal scanning — Court documents and contracts are scanned at high resolution as TIFF
• Publishing — Printers request TIFF for highest quality
• Archiving — TIFF is the archival standard (LZW compression, no generation loss)
• Fax — Traditional fax systems produce multi-page TIFF files

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What Makes TIFF Different

Unlike JPG, TIFF can be:

• Lossless — no compression artifacts
• Multi-page — one TIFF file can contain many pages
• Multi-layer — supports multiple channels
• Large — uncompressed TIFF files can be hundreds of MB

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Method 1: AltoUnlockPDF (Free, Handles Multi-Page TIFF)

Our Image to PDF tool supports TIFF upload:

1. Upload your .tiff or .tif file
2. Multi-page TIFFs are automatically split into pages
3. Choose page size and quality settings
4. Download the PDF

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Method 2: Windows — Photos App

For single-page TIFFs:

1. Open the TIFF in Photos app
2. Press Ctrl+P → select Microsoft Print to PDF
3. Print → Save

For multi-page TIFFs, Windows may only show the first page. Use LibreOffice Draw instead.

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Method 3: LibreOffice Draw (Free Desktop App)

LibreOffice Draw handles multi-page TIFFs natively:

1. Open LibreOffice Draw
2. File → Open → select your TIFF file
3. Multi-page TIFFs show all pages as slides
4. File → Export as PDF
5. Configure settings → Export

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Method 4: Mac Preview (Native Support)

Mac Preview handles TIFF natively, including multi-page files:

1. Open the TIFF file in Preview
2. For multi-page TIFFs, all pages appear in the sidebar
3. File → Export as PDF

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Method 5: Command Line Tools

ImageMagick:

# Single TIFF to PDF
convert document.tiff output.pdf

# Multi-page TIFF to PDF
convert multipage.tiff output.pdf

# With compression optimization
convert -compress Zip -quality 100 document.tiff output.pdf

Python + PIL/Pillow:

from PIL import Image
import io

def tiff_to_pdf(tiff_path, pdf_path):
    img = Image.open(tiff_path)
    
    pages = []
    for i in range(img.n_frames):
        img.seek(i)
        pages.append(img.copy().convert('RGB'))
    
    if pages:
        pages[0].save(
            pdf_path,
            format='PDF',
            save_all=True,
            append_images=pages[1:]
        )
        print(f"Converted {len(pages)} pages to PDF")

tiff_to_pdf('document.tiff', 'output.pdf')

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Method 6: img2pdf (Lossless, Best Quality)

For preserving maximum TIFF quality without re-encoding:

pip install img2pdf

# Single TIFF
img2pdf document.tiff -o output.pdf

# Multiple TIFFs
img2pdf page1.tiff page2.tiff page3.tiff -o combined.pdf

# Set DPI
img2pdf --dpi 300 document.tiff -o output.pdf

img2pdf embeds the TIFF data directly without recompression, resulting in the smallest possible lossless PDF.

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Batch TIFF Conversion

For converting many TIFF files at once:

# ImageMagick batch conversion
for file in *.tiff; do
    convert "$file" "${file%.tiff}.pdf"
done

# Or with img2pdf
for file in *.tiff; do
    img2pdf "$file" -o "${file%.tiff}.pdf"
done

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TIFF Compression Modes in PDF

When converting TIFF to PDF, the compression method matters:

Original TIFF	Best PDF Compression
Uncompressed	CCITT/ZIP
LZW	ZIP (deflate)
JPEG TIFF	JPEG in PDF
CCITT Fax	CCITT Group 4

For fax-quality black-and-white TIFFs (common in legal documents), CCITT Group 4 compression in the PDF preserves maximum quality at minimum file size.

The LibTIFF documentation is the authoritative reference for TIFF format specifications and compression options.