Inspiring

Question

Enable Layer Visibility for TIFFs in InDesign

Forum|Forum|10 months ago
April 13, 2025
4 replies
3340 views

I would like to request a long-overdue feature for Adobe InDesign: support for visibility and layer selection in TIFF files, similar to the functionality currently available with PSD files.

Currently, InDesign can read and display individual layers from PSD files on. In contrast to PSD, TIFFs are often 30–50% smaller than PSDs. This reduces storage and significantly improves network performance (e.g. VPN, NAS access). Except of this TIFF has better composite rendering in InDesign. In standard display mode, TIFFs appear significantly sharper than PSDs unless "High Quality Display" is enabled. This improves layout clarity and performance.

In magazine and editorial design, the subject's head often overlaps the masthead (logo), and this is managed via layered files. We use layered PSDs where one layer contains background and another isolated head (masking via layer effects or alpha). There are also layers which multiply hears on some hair areas, which goes over logo, makes them more visible.

TIFF is often superior in terms of size, clarity, and performance—but are unusable due to InDesign's lack of layer support.

I understand this feature may not be critical for all users, but for high-volume editorial teams, it would significantly improve efficiency, consistency, and storage use.

Feature request

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

Yeh others nailed it already.

However, instead of layers - you can use Alpha Channels in Photoshop

And InDesign can access and select those - similar to layers.

Just an example. If you prefer using TIFs - then make them like that instead of Layers in Photoshop.

Photoshop

Hope it helps.

.random..Author

Inspiring

But that’s exactly what won’t work — the whole point of working with the selection of visible layers is that, for example, you might turn off just the background and the test logo, and leave the top three layers on.

But more importantly, aren’t we constantly overlooking the main issue here? Why shouldn’t this be possible, if it’s technically feasible? Is it just because Adobe wants to push their PSD format? Or is there an actual reason?

And seriously — why are PSD files so huge, when TIFFs can be half the size?

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

It’s not about disk space, it’s about transfer speeds over the cloud and sync speeds. There’s a big difference between working with 400 files that are 500MB each, or 250MB, or 50MB.

This is a common bad habit—assuming storage is unlimited, so we end up creating dozens of versions of the same thing, cluttering servers with so much data no one can make sense of it anymore.

I’m bringing it up now because I’ve been tasked with sorting through a twenty-year archive of fifteen magazines, and that’s when you really see whether someone used their head when saving files, or whether they worked under the assumption that space is infinite—resulting in PSD files with the same layer copied multiple times with only minor tweaks.

I know AI will soon handle this—capable of processing massive archives and organizing them into something coherent. But yes, let's say storage space itself isn’t the issue—we really do have enough of it.

What I don’t want is to pull 500MB files over VPN (which is my situation), when the same file could be 50MB—if someone had taken the time to optimize it properly.

If you need layer control, try saving the PSD file and turn off the Maximize option, you will get close to the TIFF size. InDesign will complain but it will place it (you can disable the ID warning). In a quick test, it didn't seem to affect the InDesign file size.

I only used a small file I had access to:

PSD: 7.5 MG

Unmaximized PSD: 5.8 MG

TIFF: 5.3 MG

I wouldn't do it everytime--just when you need layer control.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

Even PDF exported from Photoshop - doesn't show layers in InDesign??

The option to control layer's visibility is active - but the list is empty...

File size is between PSD and TIFF.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

Only PSD files, not other format. (As far as Photoshop files are concerned.)

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

Only PSD files, not other format. (As far as Photoshop files are concerned.)

By @Dave Creamer of IDEAS

But PDFs exported from Illustrator - or even InDesign - SHOW layers and ALLOW them to be visible / hidden??

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

I see an advantage of tiff files only for big files as they are not supported by psd. PSD are normally faster than TIFF in InDesign and support Layer Compositions, which you should always use, if you use layered files from Photoshop.
The Logo should normally be done in Illustrator, not in Photoshop for quality reasons, saved as AI or PDF/ -4 and placed in InDesign.

.random..Author

Inspiring

But I’m not talking about a logo in Photoshop. The logo is in vectors, ideally directly in InDesign. Below it there’s a montage, and above the logo you have the same image with the masked head and hair layer turned on.

PSDs save is super fast—especially when compression is turned off. On an SSD, it writes incredibly quickly, often within a second, which is impressive. But then the file sizes on disk really balloon. The worst part is the data transfer across the network.

There’s absolutely no reason InDesign couldn’t handle this. TIFF works with layers just as well—it’s a standard. And when you’re pulling hundreds of files a day over a VPN or through the cloud, it makes a big difference whether an image is 200MB or 400MB.

If PSD is supposedly so great for previews, I don’t understand why, in InDesign’s standard display, it’s three times more jagged than a TIFF.