ARW to TIFF Converter

Convert ARW to TIFF: What This Tutorial Covers

This walks a Sony shooter through rendering a .arw raw into a flat, print-ready TIFF — when it's the right handoff, the one setting that quietly decides whether your TIFF is lossless or not, and the mistakes that produce a bigger-but-worse file. There's a nice piece of trivia underneath it: ARW is itself built on the TIFF specification (the TIFF/EP standard), so this conversion renders one TIFF-family format into another. The short version: convert a copy to TIFF for print, layout, or archival, and keep the original .arw as your editable master, because the render bakes in white balance and exposure and the raw's latitude does not come back.

How to Convert ARW to TIFF

1. Upload Your ARW File: Drag and drop your Sony .arw onto the page or click "+ Add Files" to browse. You can queue several Alpha raw frames at once — straight off an α7, α6000-series, or older DSLR-A body.
2. Pick a Compression Type: Open Advanced Options and set "Compression Type" — choose LZW, Deflate, or PackBits for a mathematically lossless TIFF that opens everywhere. The default is JPEG-in-TIFF, which is lossy; switch it if you want a true archival file.
3. Set the Quality Preset and Extension (Optional): Leave "Quality Preset" on "Very High (Recommended)" to preserve detail, use "Image resolution" only if you want to scale down, and pick the .tiff or .tif extension under "File extension" to match your software.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and download your TIFF. No sign-up, no watermark.

Walk-through: Choosing a Compression Type

This page defaults the "Compression Type" dropdown to JPEG, which writes a smaller file but is lossy — so the single most important thing you can do for an archival TIFF is change it. The choice is the biggest lever on both fidelity and file size, and the trade-offs are simple once you know which bucket each option lands in.

• Want a true lossless archive or print master? Choose LZW or Deflate. Both discard nothing — every pixel survives — and both are read by Photoshop, Affinity, Lightroom, GIMP, and every print RIP. Deflate (zip-style) usually squeezes a bit smaller; LZW is the most universally recognized for legacy software.
• Handing the file to old or picky software? PackBits is the simplest lossless scheme and the most broadly compatible with very old TIFF readers, at the cost of a larger file. None writes an uncompressed TIFF — biggest of all, but it opens anywhere a TIFF opens.
• Only need a smaller flat copy and don't care about re-editing? Leaving it on JPEG is fine — just know it's lossy and some professional and prepress tools won't read JPEG-compressed TIFFs. If size is the real goal, a plain JPEG is usually the better target than a JPEG-in-TIFF.

There is no separate bit-depth or DPI control on this page — the converter renders the raw to a standard high-fidelity TIFF, and your lossless-vs-lossy decision rides entirely on the compression type. A TIFF can hold 16-bit data, but treat the output here as a faithful rendered image rather than a hand-tuned high-bit-depth master; if you need precise control over bit depth, do that export from a raw editor.

Common Errors and How to Fix Them

• "My 'lossless' TIFF still threw away quality." The "Compression Type" was left on the default, JPEG, which is lossy. Re-run with LZW, Deflate, or PackBits for a mathematically lossless file.
• "The TIFF is enormous — many times bigger than the ARW." That's expected. The ARW stores one value per photosite (a Bayer mosaic); a TIFF stores three full RGB color planes for every pixel, so even with LZW it can run into the tens or hundreds of megabytes. If size matters more than edit headroom, export ARW to JPG instead.
• "The colors or exposure look off versus my edit." A camera's Creative Look or picture profile is a Sony in-body rendering instruction, and third-party raw renderers don't always reproduce it exactly. Apply your look in a raw editor and export a finished image first if color accuracy is critical.
• "My old software won't open the TIFF." It may not support the compression you chose. PackBits or None are the safest for legacy TIFF readers; some tools also reject JPEG-in-TIFF.
• "I expected to keep editing the file as a raw." A rendered TIFF is a finished image, not raw sensor data — the white balance and exposure are fixed. Keep the .arw and convert copies as needed.

When This Doesn't Work

TIFF is a rendered, flat target, so it's the wrong choice whenever you still need the raw's headroom or a tiny web file. If you plan to recover highlights, reset white balance, or push exposure, don't convert yet — keep the .arw master and edit that. If you need the smallest modern web copy, render to ARW to AVIF instead; if it has to open on absolutely anything, ARW to JPG is the universal pick. And if your workflow specifically wants the three-letter extension, the ARW to TIF page produces the identical file with a .tif name. There's no motion or hidden layers to pull out of an ARW — it's a single still frame — so this page exists to render and flatten that one frame, not to recover anything that was never in the file.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does converting ARW to TIFF lose any image quality?

It depends entirely on the "Compression Type" you pick. LZW, Deflate, and PackBits are mathematically lossless, so no pixel data is discarded at the encode step. The catch is that this page defaults to JPEG-in-TIFF, which is lossy — so for an archival file you must change it. Separately, the render itself bakes in a default white balance and exposure to turn the raw mosaic into a viewable image, and that interpretation is what you can no longer freely undo. With a lossless compression chosen, the pixel fidelity is intact; the editing latitude of the ARW is not.

My Sony sensor is only 12- or 14-bit — do I get a 16-bit TIFF?

Sony Alpha bodies record roughly 12-bit sensor data on older models (ARW 1.0, the original A100 era) and 14-bit on most modern α cameras (ARW 2.3), and a TIFF can carry 16-bit channels with room to spare. This page, though, doesn't expose a bit-depth selector — it renders to a standard high-fidelity TIFF rather than letting you hand-pick 8-bit versus 16-bit. If you specifically need a controlled 16-bit export for heavy grading, do that step in a raw editor; for most print and archival uses the rendered TIFF here is plenty.

Why is my TIFF so much larger than the ARW file?

The ARW holds a single, compactly stored raw mosaic — one brightness value per photosite behind a color filter array. A TIFF stores fully rendered RGB pixels, three color planes for every pixel, so even with lossless LZW or Deflate the file is substantially larger. In our testing, a 24-megapixel ARW around 25 MB rendered to a lossless LZW TIFF well over 100 MB, which is normal for a flat RGB image. If file size matters more than edit headroom, render to ARW to JPG instead.

Is ARW really based on TIFF, and does that make this conversion lossless?

ARW is built on the TIFF/EP standard — it uses the same tagged file structure with Intel little-endian byte order — so in a structural sense you are rendering one TIFF-lineage format into another. But "based on TIFF" does not mean the pixels copy across untouched: the ARW holds an undeveloped Bayer mosaic, and the converter has to demosaic and develop it into ordinary RGB pixels before writing the TIFF. Whether that output is lossless is decided by your "Compression Type" choice, not by the shared heritage.

Should I still keep the original ARW after converting to TIFF?

Yes — always keep the ARW as your master. A rendered TIFF, even a lossless one, is not a substitute for the raw: the white balance and exposure are fixed, and the recoverable highlight and shadow data of the digital negative is gone once it is flattened. Treat the TIFF as a high-quality working, print, or delivery copy and archive the ARW separately. If you only need the three-letter extension for some legacy tool, ARW to TIF outputs the same bytes with a .tif name.

How are my files handled, and how long are they kept?

Your ARW is uploaded over an encrypted connection, rendered into a TIFF on our servers, and deleted automatically a few hours after conversion — no sign-up, no watermark, and your photos are never shared or made public. The main practical limit on a big upload is its size and the time it takes to send, since Sony raws often run tens of megabytes each. For privacy-sensitive originals, keep the .arw locally and convert only the copies you need.