P: Photoshop 23.0 - cannot open TIF files, generated in other programs

[jazz-y]

Starting from version 22.5.2 Photoshop stopped opening some tif files. The issue is related to a previously discovered vulnerability, the escalation of which, under certain conditions, may lead to arbitrary code execution - Adobe Security Bulletin.

Important: The problem is not with Photoshop, but with third-party software developers who do not keep track of current TIF specifications

A temporary solution to the problem is to convert files in third-party editors that completely update the structure of TIF files (for example, xnView, ImageMagik, etc.); such files can also be converted using the Camera Raw plug-in (via Bridge).

We all hope that Adobe can solve this problem and find a way to bring third-party files to modern standard. But I recommend that you independently contact the developers of programs whose files Photoshop cannot open. Notify them of the problem, recommend to contact @Jeffrey Tranberry using this community. Jeffrey can provide technical information to developers to solve this problem.

List of apps that have problems (according to your feedback):

• Affinity Photo (no feedback from users, is the problem fixed in 23.0.1)
• Deep Sky Stacker (no feedback from users, is the problem fixed in 23.0.1)
• Pixinxight (no feedback from users, is the problem fixed in 23.0.1)
• tiffs from Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs
• OrthoVista (a Trimble program)
• Photo from an iPhone saved as a TIFF in Apple Preview
• Ultramap, Vexcel Imaging software
• Agisoft Metashape

There are no problems (or solved):

• GIMP
• ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2018 (solved in PS 23.0.1)
• ACDSee Pro Photo Studio  (solved in PS 23.0.1)
• Portrait Pro Studio Max 18 (solved in PS 23.0.1)
• X-rite i1Profiler (i1Publish) (solved in PS 23.0.1)
• ScanTailor (solved in PS 23.0.1)
• SNS-HDR (solved in PS 23.0.1)
• Capture One  (solved in PS 23.0.1)
• Starnet++ 1.1 (solved in PS 23.0.1)
• Deep Sky Stacker 4.2.6 (possibly depends of the file export settings)
• Acrobat DC
• PatchTool (BabelColor) - issue solved after communication with Adobe staff
• ImageMagik
• XnView 
• Blender
• World Creator 2
• Techsmith Snagit

[akbiswal]

Yes, Photoshop is freezing under Windows 10

[HPLHaverhill]

Hi Jeffrey, I've never used Batch - do I use Batch or Image Processor to open and resave trusted TIFFs? The Batch screen I have doesn't seem to have an open and save, just actions or am I missing something? Can you or someone

explain the steps? Thanks

[Kukurykus]

Create action that opens tiff & save it. In the Batch choose Source & Destination paths. Tick on 1st & 3rd box.

[Barry Rudick]

As others have noted some TIFF files are not playing nice with Photoshop vers 23.x. We have encountered another problem wth files from Epson Scan software and other older 32 bit programs we use here everyday.

Photoshop will open them but will not recognize them initially when attempting to run an Automation, Batch.

Running an action/batch on these files fails with a dialog saying there is a disk error. It also occurs when using the venerable Dr. Brown's script.

Once the files are opened once and closed immediatly they are good to go for a batch. Does that mean Photoshop writes something to the TIFF file just opening it and not saving it then? Does it write to the metadata and PS 23.x sees that? I do have logging on in the preferences.

The big problem here is that the offending file's application sources are not going to be updated. This breaks some years long workflows. There is no way around from having to open all the files and close them to get around the new restrictive TIFF specification that Adobe has adopted. That may mean opening and closing dozens or hundreds of files before doing a batch action.

This occurs on Late 2013 Mac Pro, Big Sur

I have a Mojave container/volume that I use to get around the 32 bit thing and I can run batch actions on the offending TIFFs with no problem on PS 22.x.

It appears that the new TIFF spec is too restrictive and should be modified to get around these problems, if possible. Perhaps Adobe should make a utility to batch correct TIFF files to meet their spec.

Hoping for a resolution,

Thanks,

[Jeffrey Tranberry]

@Barry Rudick If you have TIFFs that are older and the software is no longer being developed, we suggest you use the batch command in Photoshop 22.5.1 to open and resave trusted tiffs so that they will open in current and future versions of Photoshop.

[Lumigraphics]

To be clear, this is a security issue, not a "restrictive TIFF specification." TIFF is actually very open and has lot of flexibility but applications which don't follow a standard are always at the risk of being hijacked by exploits, and those are hard to fix after the fact.

Since TIFF is open, I would expect that image processing developers and image libraries will all incorporate some kind of fix in the future, but you may just be out of luck with an older and unsupported app. This is one valid argument put forth by those in the Free Software movement.

Now that the exploit is public, don't be surprised to see files floating around which could be a security risk.

[Barry Rudick]

Responding to Jeff's post:

That seems like the likely plan to follow.

It is interesting that opening and closing takes care of the problem. But I assume that PS would see an "infected" TIFF and not allow it's use?

Should all incoming TIFF files (we are a fine art printng company) be suspect? Is there a sniffer program to check?

Thanks for the info.

[Jeffrey Tranberry]

@Barry Rudick If you're running 23.0.1 or later, Photoshop will reject TIFFs that lacked an attribute which could pose a security risk.

[Jeffrey Tranberry]

We are looking at one more flavor of TIFF (tiled) to allow/support.

[JAtk]

@Jeffrey Tranberry Please do. Tiled Tiff files seem to be the cause of the error with all the existing files I have produced from Ultramap. Outputting files as scanline/interleaved, versus tiled/interleaved, resolves the file opening error. I have set all of my outputs as tiled, until now, since my orthophoto software requires tiled tifs and converts them before they can be imported.

[Jeffrey Tranberry]

@JAtk Feel free to post or DM me a link to a Tiled TIFF from your workflow so I can have engineering regress any changes with it.

[dev22167341xeoe]

Hi Jeff, what about tiled TIFFs? It seems that the new Photoshop rejects our tiled tiffs for the very same reason: because of the missing RowsPerStrip (278) entry? To my understanding it is not intended to write tiled tiffs with the RowsPerStrip (278) entry. What can we do about that?

[Mohit Goyal]

Hi all,  

We're happy to announce the release of Photoshop 23.1. This update includes the fix for this issue. To see the list of all fixed issues, click here. 

To update Photoshop to 23.1, click "Update" in the Creative Cloud desktop app next to Photoshop. More detailed instructions for updating  

Let us know if the update resolves the problem for those affected and share your feedback with us.

Thanks,

Mohit

[Jan Lunddal Larsen-PRIVAT]

It seems to have fixed our problems with images created from Imagemagick and Apple Preview 🙂

[David Mercier]

Thanks for the update. Will there also be a 23.0.3 build with this TIF change?

[Jeffrey Tranberry]

No. There will be no 23.0.3. Numbering skips from 23.0.2 > 23.1.

[ivank11134774]

Is it fixed in 22.5.4?

Otherwise there is no information on 22.5.3 and 22.5.4 at Adobe site (at least I could not find it).

Thanks.

[Jeffrey Tranberry]

@ivank11134774 Apologies. Yes. 22.5.4 also gets this tiled tiff fix as well as security fixes. This page has been updated but may take a few minutes to show the updates: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/fixed-issues-history.html 

[defaultfjcrnitxyc3w]

Sounds alot like: We locked the doors to your house and destroyed the keyhole.  This is because some burglars know how to pick locks.  Please reach out to your multi-billion dollar homebuilder and ask they they invent better lockmaking protocols for future doors/locks.  In the meantime, if you need access, go ahead and break your windows or cut a hole in the wall.  And if you want to "restore" your doors/locks to a previous version (ya know.. the one that worked) well too bad - we made that impossible.  Surely you won't, out of desperation to finish end-of-year projects and secure your end-of-year bonus, have to resort to heading over to the 'bay of pirates' to obtain a 9-year-old copy of CS6 so you can open your doors.  That would be naughty and Santa frowns upon it.  Again - good luck persuading that multi-billion dollar corporations that it's *their* fault *we* broke your doors.  Surely they'll help you out ASAP

[Lumigraphics]

Dealing with security issues is a good thing, not a bad thing. Forcing programmers to follow standards for interoperability is also a good thing.

[ivank11134774]

It seems that you never dealt with those old files prodused by programs/companies that do not exist on the market anymore. As for Adobe, it would not only be nice but required to make a simple one-click converter for such TIFFs to make them "good enough" for the modern Photoshop. Otherwise the suggested workarounds are disturbing the workflow.

[Lumigraphics]

I've been doing computer graphics since JPEG was still new. So yeah there are loads of TIFF files floating around, some of them really old. That STILL doesn't change the fact that leaving a security hole open is not acceptable.

[Kimberly15B9]

Still having issues - spent considerable amount of time with support and no resolution. Images came from Epson ET-2600 printer/scanner. Some will open, some will not, resulting in this error message "Could not complete your request because of a program error". Using 23.4.2.

[Christopher Ferro]

I've been  having incredibly frustrating time trying to get around this issue now. I have upgraded to 23.4.2 and I am still getting the invalid file error when trying to open TIFFs generated by our software. Before I ask our developers if they can (or will) implement changes as suggested by answers to this post, I'd like to make sure there's not something I am missing or that Adobe expects the latest releases (post 23.1) to completely take care of the problem.

Thanks,

CJSF

[Lumigraphics]

Your developers need to make sure that their implementation is up to standard. Most of the time, a developer will just use a library that is used in hundreds of other programs, so it isn't that big a deal.