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TIFF to PDF Converter
Convert a TIFF into a PDF document. Multi-page TIFFs stay multi-page — a three-page scan becomes a three-page PDF, in order. That is the whole reason this conversion exists, because scanners produce multi-page TIFFs and a great many converters quietly hand back only the first page.
Drag and drop your TIFF images here
Add several at once. Each file is processed and then deleted from our server.
Up to 20 MB per file Batch ready
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Step by step
How to convert TIFF to PDF in 3 steps
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Add your TIFF
Single or multi-page, both work.
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Nothing to set
Pages come across in order, losslessly.
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Download your PDF and check the page count matches. It should
Format comparison
TIFF vs PDF
TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)
LosslessA flexible container used in scanning, printing and archiving, where quality matters more than size.
- Lossless, with high bit depths and CMYK for print
- Standard in publishing and scanning workflows
- Large files, and web browsers cannot display it
PDF (Portable Document Format)
DocumentA fixed-layout document format that looks the same on every device and printer.
- Opens identically everywhere, and prints reliably
- Holds many images as pages of one file
- A document rather than an image, so it is awkward to edit or embed
Multi-page TIFF, and why it is the point
TIFF is one of very few image formats that can hold several pages in a single file, and that capability is why it became the standard output of document scanners and fax systems. Feed twenty sheets through a scanner and you get one TIFF with twenty pages.
PDF is the natural destination for that, since it is a multi-page format too. Each TIFF page becomes a PDF page, in the same order, with nothing dropped.
It is worth verifying the page count on any converter you use, including this one. A tool that returns page one looks like it worked — you get a valid PDF and no error — while most of the document has quietly gone. That failure is far more damaging than an outright refusal, because you may not notice until someone else does.
Nothing is re-encoded
The image data is carried into the document rather than decoded and re-drawn, so a scan arrives at exactly the quality it had. For an uncompressed TIFF the document usually comes out smaller — around 30% in testing — because a PDF applies lossless compression where the TIFF applied none.
CMYK is preserved
TIFF is the format print work lives in, and much of that work is CMYK rather than RGB. PDF is also a print format and handles CMYK natively, so those values are carried across untouched rather than being converted to screen colours and back.
This matters: a CMYK image converted to RGB and back does not return to where it started, and on a press the difference is visible. If your TIFF came from a designer or a print shop, this is the conversion that respects it.
16-bit images
TIFF can store 16 bits per channel where most formats store 8. That extra depth is for editing headroom rather than anything visible, and it is reduced to 8-bit on the way into the document. Nothing you can see is lost; if you are still editing, keep working from the TIFF.
Quality
Quality and file size
There is no quality setting, because nothing is thrown away.
Documents can be large
A multi-page scan at 300 or 600 DPI is a lot of data, and since nothing is recompressed the document reflects that. A twenty-page colour scan can easily reach tens of megabytes.
If the file needs to be emailed or uploaded, the honest answer is that a lossless document of a long scan will be large, and the options are:
- Convert to JPG first for photographic content, then build a PDF. JPEG data embeds untouched and is far more efficient on photographs.
- Scan at a lower resolution next time. 300 DPI is right for text; 600 is for archival work and is rarely necessary.
- Scan in greyscale or black and white if the pages have no colour. A bitonal scan is a fraction of the size of a colour one.
Compression inside the TIFF
TIFF supports several compression schemes and files use them inconsistently: uncompressed, LZW, Deflate, PackBits, and CCITT Group 4 for bitonal faxes. All of these are read correctly. Group 4 in particular is extremely efficient for scanned text, and those documents stay small.
Text stays a picture
A scan is a photograph of a page. The resulting PDF holds pictures, not text, so it cannot be searched or copied from. Making it searchable needs optical character recognition, which is a different kind of tool — and a common requirement when submitting documents, so worth checking before you send.
Where these files come from
- Document scanners, which default to multi-page TIFF in a great deal of office software.
- Fax systems, historically and still in healthcare and legal work.
- Print and pre-press, where TIFF is the standard interchange format.
- Archives and libraries, which favour TIFF for preservation because it is lossless and extremely well documented.
- Microscopy and satellite imaging, where the format's flexibility with bit depths and channels matters.
Why PDF instead
TIFF is an excellent storage format and a poor sharing format. Browsers will not display it, email clients will not preview it, phones often cannot open it, and many upload forms reject it outright.
PDF opens everywhere, prints predictably, and keeps the multi-page structure that made the TIFF worth having. For sending a scanned document to another person, it is almost always the right container.
Page order
Pages come across in the order they appear inside the TIFF, which is the order they were scanned. Nothing is sorted or rearranged.
If a scan came out in the wrong order, that happened at the scanner and needs fixing there or in a PDF editor afterwards — this conversion faithfully reproduces whatever the file contains, including a mistake.
Related
Going the other way, PDF to JPG and PDF to PNG render pages back to images, and both return every page rather than only the first. For building a document from separate image files rather than one multi-page TIFF, images to PDF takes up to fifty and lets you order them.
What happens to your file
Browsers cannot write PDF documents, so this runs on our server. Your upload is deleted the moment conversion finishes, the result is deleted as you download it, and anything abandoned is swept automatically.
Worth stating plainly for this tool: the TIFFs people convert are usually scanned documents — contracts, records, medical and legal papers.
Privacy
What happens to your file
This tool runs on our server, so it works the same on every phone and computer. Your file is uploaded, and this is exactly what happens to it:
- Stored outside the public web root under a random name, never under your file's name.
- Processed, with the original upload deleted immediately — whether it succeeded or failed.
- The result sits behind a signed link that only you receive, which stops working after 20 minutes, and the file is deleted the moment you download it.
- Anything never collected is deleted automatically within 30 minutes.
- The image itself is never logged or kept. If a conversion fails, we record the formats involved and the error — not the file.
- Camera metadata, including any GPS coordinates recording where a photo was taken, is removed from the result. Only the rotation needed to show the image the right way up is kept.
Questions & answers
TIFF to PDF: frequently asked questions
Will every page of my multi-page TIFF be converted?
Yes. Each TIFF page becomes a PDF page in the same order — a three-page scan gives a three-page PDF. It is worth checking the page count on any converter, because one that returns only page one still produces a valid-looking PDF with no error, and you may not notice until someone else does.
Is my scan re-compressed?
No. The image data is carried into the document rather than decoded and re-drawn, so the scan arrives at exactly the quality it had. For an uncompressed TIFF the document usually comes out around 30% smaller, because the PDF applies lossless compression where the TIFF applied none.
Does it keep CMYK colour?
Yes. PDF handles CMYK natively, so print-ready values are carried across untouched rather than being converted to screen colours and back — a round trip that does not return to where it started, and which is visible on a press.
My PDF is enormous. What can I do?
A lossless document of a long high-resolution scan is simply large. For photographic content, convert to JPG first and then build the PDF. Otherwise scan at 300 DPI rather than 600, and in greyscale or black and white if the pages have no colour — a bitonal scan is a fraction of the size.
Will the text in my scan be searchable?
No. A scan is a photograph of a page, so the PDF holds pictures rather than text and cannot be searched or copied from. That needs optical character recognition, which is a different kind of tool — worth checking before submitting somewhere that requires searchable documents.
What about 16-bit TIFFs?
They convert fine. The extra depth is editing headroom rather than anything visible, and it is reduced to 8-bit for the document. Nothing you can see is lost — but if you are still editing, keep working from the TIFF.
My pages are in the wrong order.
Then they are in that order inside the TIFF — the conversion reproduces the file faithfully, including a scanning mistake. Fix it at the scanner, or rearrange the pages in a PDF editor afterwards.
Keep going
Related image tools
TIFF to JPG Converter
Convert TIFF scans and print files to JPG. CMYK is converted to sRGB properly, so colours look right rather than inverted.
TIFF to PNG Converter
Convert TIFF to PNG without losing a pixel. Keeps transparency and 16-bit depth, and opens where TIFF will not.
PDF to JPG Converter
Convert every page of a PDF to JPG images. Choose the resolution; multi-page documents come back as a ZIP.
Images to PDF
Combine several images into one PDF, one page each. Drag to reorder, choose A4 or fit-to-image. Nothing is re-encoded.