TIFF to PDF Converter

How to Convert TIFF to PDF Online

1. Upload Your TIFF File: Drag and drop your .tif / .tiff files or click "+ Add Files" to browse. Multi-page TIFFs and batches of single-page TIFFs are both supported in the same upload.
2. Pick Combine and Paper size: Set Combine? to "Single PDF" to merge every uploaded image into one document, or "Individual PDFs" to get a separate PDF per file. Choose a Paper size preset — A4 (210x297 mm), Letter (8.5x11 in), Legal, Tabloid, A3, B4, B5, Executive, or Ledger — and set Page layout to Portrait or Landscape.
3. Tune Margin, Placement, Compression (Optional): Margins range from No margin (0") through Narrow (0.5"), Moderate (0.75x1"), Normal (1"), and Large (2x1"). Image placement is Contained (fit inside the page) or Cover (fill the page, may crop). Image alignment is Top, Center, or Bottom. Drop Image Compression quality below the default 75 to shrink large scans; set Image Transparency to Removed if the source has an alpha channel and you need a flat white background.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert". TIFF pages convert in order — a 50-page multi-page TIFF becomes a 50-page PDF, page 1 first.

Why Convert TIFF to PDF?

TIFF (Tag Image File Format, last revised by Adobe in 1992 as TIFF 6.0) was built for high-fidelity raster storage in publishing and scanning workflows. The classic spec caps files at 4 GB because of its 32-bit offsets — BigTIFF lifts that to 64-bit but isn't universally supported. PDF is the practical delivery format: smaller on disk, viewable in every browser and reader, and the basis for the PDF/A archival standard (ISO 19005). Common reasons to convert:

• Email and upload friendliness — A 300 DPI letter-size scan is roughly 25 MB as uncompressed TIFF or 3-8 MB with LZW; the same scan as a PDF is typically 100-500 KB. Below Gmail's 25 MB attachment cap with room to spare.
• Scanner output for sharing — Office MFPs and Fujitsu ScanSnap units often produce multi-page TIFFs. Converting to PDF gives recipients a file their default OS viewer (Preview, Edge, Chrome) opens without prompting for a TIFF plug-in.
• Court and government e-filing — Many U.S. federal courts (PACER/CM-ECF) and state agencies accept PDF but reject TIFF; converting preserves the page-per-page structure they expect.
• Long-term archival — PDF/A-2 and PDF/A-3 (ISO 19005-2/-3) embed fonts and color profiles for fixed-appearance preservation; institutions migrating TIFF scan repositories to PDF/A standardize on this.
• Multi-page consolidation — Combine dozens of single-page TIFFs (one per scan) into a single PDF you can bookmark, page through, and OCR downstream.
• Cross-platform proofing — Designers receiving CMYK TIFF proofs flatten them to PDF before sending to clients who don't have Photoshop.

TIFF vs PDF — Format Comparison

Page Size & Margin Quick Guide

Frequently Asked Questions

Will a multi-page TIFF become a multi-page PDF, or one PDF per page?

A multi-page TIFF is converted into one PDF with the same number of pages, in the original order. If you also have separate single-page TIFFs in the same batch and set Combine? to "Single PDF", they're appended in upload order. Choose "Individual PDFs" to get one PDF per source file instead (the multi-page TIFF still produces a single multi-page PDF, separate from the others).

How do I keep CMYK colors from a press-ready TIFF when converting?

Set Image Compression quality to 90 or higher and leave Image Transparency as "Unchanged". The conversion preserves the source color mode where possible, so a CMYK TIFF produces a CMYK PDF suitable for prepress. If you need RGB output for screen, convert in your image editor first.

My TIFF is 4 GB — why does the upload fail or stall?

The original TIFF 6.0 specification uses 32-bit offsets, capping files at 4 GB. Files larger than that are BigTIFFs (a 64-bit extension proposed by Adobe's Steve Carlsen). Browser uploads are also constrained by available memory. Try splitting the BigTIFF into smaller TIFFs first, or use Compress TIFF to shrink before converting.

Will the PDF be smaller than the TIFF?

Almost always, yes. An uncompressed TIFF of a 300 DPI letter-size page is about 25 MB; with LZW it's 3-8 MB; the equivalent PDF is typically 100-500 KB. If your output PDF is still large, lower the Image Compression quality slider (default 75) and check that you didn't enable Cover placement on tiny thumbnails (which can upscale them).

Can I OCR the PDF so the text is searchable?

This converter places the TIFF as an image — the output is a raster PDF. To add a searchable text layer, run the result through an OCR tool (Adobe Acrobat's "Recognize Text", Tesseract, or ABBYY FineReader). Many institutions prefer this two-step flow: convert first to lock the visual fidelity, OCR second to add the text layer.

What's the difference between TIFF, TIF, and BigTIFF?

TIFF and TIF are the same format — only the filename extension differs (some early DOS/Windows tools used the 3-letter .tif). BigTIFF uses the same tag structure but with 64-bit offsets, so it can exceed 4 GB. The xconvert TIFF to PDF converter accepts both .tif and .tiff; very large BigTIFFs may exceed browser upload limits.

Should I use this or the dedicated Merge TIFF to PDF tool?

Use this page when you want one PDF per TIFF (or a simple "all into one PDF" combine) with standard page sizes and margins. Use Merge TIFF to PDF when you specifically want to combine several TIFFs into a single PDF with merge-focused controls. The reverse direction is PDF to TIFF.

Will EXIF, GPS, or ICC profile data carry over?

ICC color profiles are typically preserved so colors look the same as in the source. EXIF and GPS metadata from the TIFF are not embedded in the PDF page content — if you need that metadata for archival, keep the original TIFF alongside the PDF (this is the PDF/A-3 pattern, which allows arbitrary file attachments).

Why does my output PDF have white bars around a photo?

That's Contained image placement preserving the full image inside the page with letterboxing. Switch Image placement to "Cover" to fill the page (some edges may be cropped), or pick a paper size closer to your image aspect ratio. Setting Margin to "No margin" also removes the border padding.