Convert PDF to TIFF Online

Convert PDF to TIFF Online — Free, Multi-Page, 300 DPI

PDF is the universal document format, but a lot of legacy and specialized workflows still demand TIFF. Fax archives, eDiscovery production sets, medical imaging systems, prepress proofing, government records management, and most enterprise document-management platforms expect TIFF for raster pages. This converter rasterizes every PDF page into TIFF at the chosen DPI, with the chosen compression, packaged as a single multi-page TIFF or one TIFF per page — whichever the workflow needs. No Acrobat Pro, no Ghostscript, no ImageMagick install required.

Quick guide: PDF in, TIFF out

1. Drop the .pdf file (or many at once) into the upload box at the top of this page.
2. Confirm TIFF as the output format.
3. Click Download converted file. By default the converter outputs a single multi-page TIFF at 300 DPI with LZW compression.
4. The .tif file downloads automatically — open in Windows Photos, macOS Preview, IrfanView, or any TIFF-aware viewer; navigate pages with arrow keys.

Single multi-page TIFF or one TIFF per page?

Both modes are supported and both have their place:

Multi-page TIFF support is built into Windows Imaging Component, macOS Preview, ImageMagick, libtiff, and every commercial document-imaging library. There's no special viewer needed.

Pick the right compression for your workflow

LZW (default)

Lossless, broadly compatible, good compression ratio for typical scanned and rendered pages. The default choice when there's no specific reason to pick something else. Works in every viewer, every imaging library, every legacy system from the 1990s onward.

ZIP / Deflate

Lossless, smaller files than LZW (typically 5–15% smaller on text-heavy documents), slightly less compatible with older viewers and embedded systems. Use when storage cost matters and the consumer is a modern viewer.

CCITT Group 4 (Fax G4)

Bitonal (1-bit black-and-white) only, the smallest possible files (often 10× smaller than LZW), used for faxes, pure-text scans, and bitonal eDiscovery production. The converter automatically converts the rasterized pages to 1-bit during compression. Half-tone screening is applied for any photographic content. The standard for SEC, FINRA, and federal court production sets.

JPEG inside TIFF

Lossy color compression at the page level — useful for color-photograph documents (catalogs, brochures, magazines) where some quality loss is acceptable for much smaller files. Not recommended for text-heavy documents because JPEG artefacts make small text fuzzy.

None / no compression

Raw uncompressed pages. Largest possible files. Used for archival masters where any decoder dependency is unacceptable, and for downstream tools that require uncompressed input (some specialized OCR engines, scientific imaging pipelines).

DPI guide: how sharp do you need it?

File size grows roughly with the square of DPI, so 600 DPI is 4× the size of 300 DPI. Pick the lowest DPI that still satisfies the downstream requirement. For OCR, 300 DPI is the sweet spot — below that recognition accuracy drops sharply, above that returns diminish.

Real use cases for PDF-to-TIFF conversion

Legal eDiscovery production

The federal eDiscovery standard (Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 34(b) and the Sedona Conference guidelines) commonly specifies bitonal multi-page TIFF at 300 DPI with CCITT G4 compression for production sets, accompanied by a load file (Concordance .DAT or Relativity .OPT) and Bates numbering. This converter produces the TIFF half — Bates stamping is added afterward in Relativity, Logikcull, Everlaw, or DISCO.

OCR pipelines

Tesseract, ABBYY FineReader, Adobe Acrobat OCR, Google Cloud Vision, AWS Textract, and Azure Form Recognizer all accept TIFF as input and many work better with TIFF than with PDF (no embedded font surprises, predictable rasterization). One-TIFF-per-page output is the standard for parallel OCR processing.

Medical imaging adjacent (non-DICOM)

Hospital radiology and pathology systems are DICOM-based, but ancillary documents (consent forms, lab reports, referral letters, insurance authorizations) are stored as TIFF in many EMR / EHR systems including Epic, Cerner, Meditech, and Allscripts. Converting these from PDF maintains the audit trail without the EMR vendor's TIFF-only ingestion barrier.

Fax archival and replacement

Despite being decades old, fax remains common in healthcare, law, government, and real estate. Faxed pages are stored as bitonal TIFF historically. Converting incoming PDFs to TIFF with CCITT G4 compression at 200 DPI matches the fax format exactly — useful for hybrid workflows that route both fax and email through the same archive.

Prepress and offset printing

Commercial printers accept PDF/X for color-managed prepress, but proof rounds and step-and-repeat workflows often run through TIFF. RIP software (Heidelberg Prinect, Esko ArtPro, Kodak Prinergy) handles TIFF natively.

Government records and FOIA responses

FOIA responses, court filings, regulatory submissions to FDA / EPA / SEC / FCC, and state government records management systems frequently specify TIFF. NARA (National Archives) accepts TIFF as a preservation format for digital records.

Long-term archival and PDF/A alternatives

PDF/A is the dominant archival standard, but TIFF is also accepted by ISO 19005 and many institutional repositories. Some archivists prefer TIFF for image-only documents because it has no scripting, no fonts, and no embedded objects — just pixels — making future-proofing simpler.

Online converter vs Total PDF Converter desktop

Common PDF-to-TIFF issues and how to solve them

Encrypted PDF won't convert. PDFs with owner or user passwords need to be unlocked first. Open in Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader, enter the password, and save a new copy with no password (File > Print > Save as PDF works). The desktop Total PDF Converter handles password-protected PDFs directly when the password is provided.

Output TIFF is huge. Either DPI is too high (drop from 600 to 300, or 300 to 200), compression is none / LZW (try ZIP or G4 for bitonal), or the source PDF has embedded high-resolution images. Bitonal G4 compression at 200 DPI produces files an order of magnitude smaller than 300 DPI LZW for typical text documents.

Text in TIFF is fuzzy. The PDF was rasterized at too low a DPI — 150 DPI loses sharpness on body text. Re-convert at 300 DPI minimum. For legal contracts with footnotes, use 400 DPI.

OCR doesn't pick up the text. The TIFF was created at too low a DPI for the OCR engine, or compression is JPEG (which adds artefacts that confuse OCR). Use 300 DPI minimum and LZW or G4 compression for OCR-bound output.

Color information lost. CCITT G4 compression is bitonal-only. For color-preserving compression use LZW (lossless), ZIP (lossless), or JPEG inside TIFF (lossy).

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