Converting TIFF Images to PDF
TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) shows up constantly in scientific imaging — microscopy software, gel documentation systems, and some lab scanners default to it. It's not a format most people can casually view or share, which is where converting to PDF helps.
Why TIFF is still common in labs
TIFF supports lossless compression (or no compression at all), preserving every pixel of detail — important when a gel band's faint intensity or a microscopy image's fine structure actually matters for your analysis. JPG's lossy compression can introduce artifacts that a PDF or presentation doesn't need, but that matter a great deal in image-intensive scientific analysis. The tradeoff: large file sizes, and a format most non-specialist software doesn't open natively.
Why convert to PDF
- Shareability — nearly everyone can open a PDF; far fewer people have software that opens TIFF directly
- Combining multiple images — several TIFF files become pages of one PDF, useful for a set of related images (e.g., all lanes of a gel, or a time-series of microscopy frames)
- Embedding in reports — a PDF is easier to attach to an email or upload to a portal than a folder of TIFF files
Upload your TIFF file(s) to Scitero's TIFF to PDF tool — free, no sign up.
Multiple files become multiple pages in one combined PDF, in the order you upload them.
Download and check image quality at 100% zoom before using it in a report or presentation.
💡 Keep your original TIFF files
If you might need the image again for further quantitative analysis (e.g., re-measuring band intensity), keep the original TIFF. PDF conversion is for sharing and viewing — for continued image analysis work, the original lossless file is still the better source.