PDF to TIFF

Legal firms, medical records departments, and commercial printers share one workflow bottleneck. Their document management systems, fax servers, and print production pipelines require TIFF input, not PDF. TIFF has been the industry standard for document archiving and professional printing since the 1980s, and that has not changed. Getting from a PDF to a clean, lossless TIFF at the correct DPI should not require an Adobe Acrobat Pro subscription or uploading a confidential document to a remote server. This converter handles the full process locally inside your browser, at resolutions up to 1200 DPI, with LZW lossless compression applied client-side.

How It Works

1. Load your PDF: Select a file or drag it into the tool. PDF.js, Mozilla's open-source PDF rendering engine, parses the document entirely in browser memory. No data is transmitted to any server at any point in the process.
2. Configure your TIFF settings: Set resolution (150, 300, 600, or 1200 DPI), choose color mode (RGB for full color, Grayscale, or Black and White 1-bit for fax-compatible output), pick compression (none for maximum compatibility, LZW for lossless size reduction, or JPEG for the smallest file), and select which pages to export: all, a custom range, odd/even, or first page only.
3. Convert and download: Each selected page is rendered onto an HTML5 Canvas at your chosen DPI and scale. A pure JavaScript TIFF writer then encodes that canvas as a TIFF file, applying LZW compression client-side if selected. Files are available individually or packaged in a ZIP archive.

Compatibility and Support

Supported Input and Output Formats

• Input: PDF files of all versions, including multi-page, vector-only, image-embedded, and mixed-content documents
• Output: TIFF with three compression options: uncompressed (lossless, maximum compatibility), LZW (lossless, smaller files), or JPEG (lossy, smallest files)
• Color modes: RGB full color, Grayscale, and Black and White 1-bit for fax-server-compatible TIFF output
• DPI settings: 150 for web and screen, 300 for print standard, 600 for archival, 1200 for ultra-high-fidelity archival work
• Page selection: All pages, custom range such as 1,3,5 or 2-10, odd pages, even pages, or first page only
• Scale: 50%, 75%, 100%, 150%, 200% of original page dimensions

Unsupported Formats

• Password-protected PDFs: PDF.js cannot render encrypted files. Remove the password first using an unlock PDF tool, then convert.
• Non-PDF inputs: Only PDF files are accepted. Word documents, spreadsheets, or images must be converted to PDF first before using this tool.
• Selectable text in output: TIFF is a raster format. All content becomes pixels on conversion. Text is not selectable, editable, or machine-readable in the output file.

File Size Limits

Because conversion runs entirely in the browser, there is no server-imposed file size cap. Processing a 50-page PDF at 1200 DPI in one pass will push browser memory hard. For large documents, use the custom page range to convert sections of 10 to 15 pages at a time for stable, fast results on any device.

Who Should Use This Tool?

• Students: A design student who receives a PDF brief and needs individual pages as high-resolution TIFF files for Photoshop or InDesign compositing. 300 DPI output gives print-ready assets without needing any installed desktop software.
• Freelancers and Designers: Print designers who receive client artwork or proofs as PDFs and need TIFF files for their prepress workflow. RGB and Grayscale mode options map directly to standard print production color requirements.
• Office Professionals: Legal and compliance teams archiving contracts or case files into a document management system that accepts only TIFF input. Black and White 1-bit at 300 DPI is also the correct output format for most corporate fax server integrations.
• Developers: Back-end engineers building OCR pipelines where the processing engine expects TIFF input at a fixed DPI. The first-page-only option generates cover thumbnails from a PDF library quickly without rendering every page.

Why This Tool Beats the Alternatives

• No account required: Premium converters lock 300+ DPI settings behind a paid plan. Every DPI option here, including 1200, is accessible without signing up.
• No watermarks on output: Free tiers on competing tools often brand the output file. Every TIFF exported here is completely clean.
• No file uploads: Browser-based processing means sensitive documents never leave your machine. Most server-based converters retain uploaded files for hours before deletion.
• Higher DPI ceiling: Standard free tools cap resolution at 150 or 300 DPI. Getting to 600 or 1200 DPI elsewhere typically requires a paid subscription or desktop software.
• More control in one place: The TIF to PDF converter handles the reverse workflow, and PDF to JPG covers cases where TIFF is too large for the target system.

Pro Tips

• Use Black and White 1-bit mode for fax and text archiving: A text-only document in 1-bit B&W with LZW compression at 300 DPI produces dramatically smaller TIFF files than the same page in RGB. Fax servers specifically require 1-bit TIFF input, so this mode is not just a size optimization, it is a compatibility requirement.
• Choose LZW over no compression by default: Uncompressed TIFF is the largest possible output and only marginally more compatible than LZW. In practice, every major document management system and image editor supports LZW TIFF. Use uncompressed only if a specific legacy system explicitly requires it.
• Set 300 DPI for print and 600 DPI for scanned-document archiving: If your TIFF output will go into an OCR pipeline or a long-term document archive, 600 DPI preserves fine detail that 300 DPI will soften. For standard print proofing, 300 DPI is the right balance between file size and sharpness.

Drop your PDF into the tool above, set your DPI and compression, and the browser converts it without touching a server. For the reverse workflow, the TIF to PDF converter is one click away.