What is TIFF?
Also known as: Tagged Image File Format, .tif
Tagged Image File Format — the lossless raster format preferred for production textile printing. Supports embedded color profiles, alpha channels, multi-page documents, and 8/16/32-bit depth.
In detail
TIFF is the standard high-quality raster format for production handoff in textile printing. Its advantages over PNG and JPEG: (1) lossless compression preserves every pixel exactly; (2) supports 16-bit and 32-bit depth for high-dynamic-range work; (3) embeds ICC color profiles natively, ensuring color reproduces correctly on the print partner's RIP; (4) supports multi-page documents — useful for delivering separated channels in one file (e.g., 6 spot-color separations as a 6-page TIFF); (5) supports alpha channels for transparent regions. The drawbacks are file size (larger than JPEG) and limited browser support (cannot be displayed natively on the web). Designers export to TIFF for production handoff and to PNG/JPEG for web previews and client review. TIFF's only meaningful disadvantage is file size: a 16-bit production TIFF at 300 DPI for a 30cm × 30cm rapport is ~75 MB, which slows uploads, downloads, and storage. For large collections that's significant. The mitigation is ZIP-compressed TIFF (lossless but smaller) and using PNG previews for client-review rounds while keeping TIFFs only at the production handoff.
Example
A 30 cm × 30 cm rapport at 300 DPI exports to a 3543 × 3543 pixel, 16-bit TIFF with embedded sRGB IEC61966-2.1 ICC profile. File size: ~75 MB. The print partner's RIP reads the embedded profile and reproduces the colors within Delta E 2 across the entire production run.