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How do I open an unsupported Tiff?

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
October 26, 2012
7 replies
38257 views

Hello there,

I have a folder of tiffs that were recovered from an sd card out of a Canon T3i. The only recovery software that worked saved them as Tiff files. I can view the thumbnail, I can even view the full res version in Windows Picture Viewer, but the files cannot be opened by Lightroom, Photoshop, Infranview or Gimp. The all spit out a message to the tune of "unsupported tiff format".

I'd be happy to just get these things into jpeg format so that I can edit them, this mess is turning into a nightmare. Please, please give me some wisdom. I'm at a loss.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer conroy

Is there such a thing as a codec fot tif formats that I might be missing?

I'm finding a load of software opens your TIFF. Only Photoshop and Illustrator fail here. Use Camera Raw to open it, and either save it to a new file from there or send the image into Photoshop.

V

vladimirm32362769

Participant

Adobe lightroom worked for me

K

KatieSc0tt

Participant

THANK YOU!!! I tried all the other things but your solution worked for me!!!

I imported the faulty tiff into Lightroom and I'm good!!

Yay!! THANK YOU!!

K

KatieSc0tt

Participant

Funny thing - Photoshop still hates it. I can export it from Lightroom - so I'm good - THANK YOU!!

BTW - This is NOT an old tiff.

Q

qrwteydfvdvcgggfffff

Participant

I had a similar problem. Several years ago I scanned a load of documents and saved them as .TIF files. I now have WIndows 7 and Office 2010 and NOTHING will open those files.
I have scoured the net and tried EVERYTHING and just one thing worked, read on:
The problem is not Photoshop.
The problem is that Windows 7 does not now suport TIFF format and previous versions of it a) did and b) tended to employ the Microsoft Document Imaging (MDI) to save tiff files - no matter what application you thought you were actually in at the time.
Now, MDI has several compression options for TIF format and the default was some weird Microsoft custom variation. So, any .TIF files you saved were saved in cant-ever-read-again-if-Microsoft-change-their-minds format.
Microsoft then proceded to change its mind.
In MDI, the compression options are in TOOLS/OPTIONS, compression-tab. In a logical, just and sane world, the "Perform lossless compression" box would ALWAYS be ticked - this saves things in "normal" tif format so other things can read it.
However, we aren't living in a world like that, we are living in a world substantially run by Microsoft. MDI was discontinued and MIcrosoft ceased support for the .TIF format, leaving people like us high and dry - thanks Microsoft !
So,What I did was:
Get my old Office 2003 installation disc and installed ONLY the MDI software (X-out everything else in the installation list).
Yes it will sit alongside Office 2010 Ok.
Start it up and do TOOLS/OPTIONS, compression-tab and tick "Perform lossless compression". Click Ok etc. to close the dialog.
Do FILE/IMPORT to pick up a .TIF file. (I found that it was faster to paste the path in rather than use the file-open dialog navigation).
Do FILE/SAVE AS and choose type .mdi (Click OPTIONS and check the quality options etc.). Click OK to save
Do FILE/SAVE AS again and this time choose type .tif. CLick OK to save.
You should now be abke to read the .tif file in things like Photoshop (I found that Camera Raw auto started to load it. I then saved it as type .jpg).
Hope this helps.

Chris Cox

Legend

Oh, ouch - the Microsoft Document Imaging was the old Wang Imaging library, which butchered TIFF files and largely ignored the standard.

Yeah, opening it in MDI and resaving is probably your only hope.

Q

qrwteydfvdvcgggfffff

Participant

One thing I forgot to say:

For the love of G*D UNINSTALL MDI after you have finished updating your tif disasters.

Why? Because Microsoft will assume that you have re-started your love affair with Office 2003 and download all 27 million Office 2003 updates to your computer. Your registry will go down like the Titanic and you will begin believing that losing all your commercially vital scanned documents was quite acceptable by comparison after all.

JJMack

Community Expert

Artifex1975 wrote:
I have a folder of tiffs that were recovered from an sd card out of a Canon T3i. The only recovery software that worked saved them as Tiff files.

I think the mystery you need to solve is how did the sd card become corrupt and require you to use a recovery software to recover files on it in the first place.

Recovery software is a program somewhat like a check disk program with a different end result in mind. The both read the data on the media and reconcile the data structures on the media. Check disk recovers lost space no longer accounted for in the FAT and marks the areas free. It also checkes the file structures to make sure files are not cross linked and fixing errors the best it can and creates file or parts of files the seem to exist without directory entry. Check disk can also do more extensive recovery checks and check for bad area and reassign alternate area.

Recovery programs reads the media an book keep the data structures with a different end in mind. It wants to rebuild the files it finds intact. It creates directory entries for file it finds intact and markes their data areas as allocated in the FAT. Recovery programs do not trans-code or change files data formats. They just piece file back together s far as I know.

Your Cannon T3i writes RAW and Jpeg files. The recovered file you posted is 19MB with metadata and Chris Cox has identified its data format as an old obsolete Tiff file format. This leads me to think that you at one point had the SD card mounted on you computer and used the files on the SD card with a program that converted the Jpeg and RAW files on the SD card to Tiff files. Deleted the Jpeg and RAW files on the SD card and wrote the Tiff files onto the SD card and in the process the SD card format was messed up.

I could be very wrong but it the only thing my brain can think up.

JJMack

Community Expert

Since cameras do not write tiff format image files. Try renaming the recovered file from *.tif to *.jpg. So now you have three thar agree it may be that just the ext is wrong.

JJMack

Mylenium

Legend

I agree with Silkrooster. They could be JPEGs, after all. If Windows can show them, they cannot be that exotic. That being so, as a last resort you can always open them in Paint and save them to something else, if simply renaimg them to JPEG doesn't work.

Mylenium

Silkrooster

Legend

I am betting it's the wrong file extention on the image. Why would a program convert the file format to one thats not popular (type of tiff that is). Try changing the extenion on one of the files to jpg and see if photoshop will open it. Just a hunch and maybe I am wrong, but at least it will rule it out.

A

Artifex1975Author

Participating Frequently

I've tried changing it to both a cr2 and jpeg, but still nothing will load it. Infranview still says it's a tif and asks if I want to fix it. Photoshop says it's an unsupported format. Paint won't open it either.

So why can Windows view it with that file extension? This thing is driving me insane. Is there some type of plugin for photoshop to allow it to open a wider range of tiff formats?

JJMack

Community Expert

Answer 15 is in fact "Correct", and I recall seeing it marked as such.

While Chris' response in 17 is somewhat informative, it's certainly not "Correct" in leading to a solution to the stated problem, nor really is it entirely correct, as it somewhat mischaracterizes the likelihood that an application could open the file, as already shown a couple of different ways here.

Conroy seems to have been subject to a bit more moderation than most posters here, and I don't blame him for being sensitive to it, though it's pretty clear his thoughts on the activity don't seem to matter to whomever is doing the moderating.

It's not clear why the points assignment was changed, nor whether that really matters much in the grand scheme of world hunger and I caution everyone to not place too much weight on the subtlety of things. This is just a place where people type whatever pops into their heads.

Switch (Belinda McClory) said it best in the Matrix: "It doesn't mean anything".

-Noel

Noel

Conroy is correct for the OP in this case. But does not work on my machine.

Chris's infomation I feel is also correct and important.

If I was having the same problem as the OP and downloaded his tiff and saw I had the same problem with his as with mine.

When I saw conroy's append I would have tried it and found it did not work on my machine.

I would then see that it worked on the Op machine and I would also have seen Chris append.

I would now be asking the Op which version of Windows and Photoshop he is using and what image Codecs he had installed on his system and I would be searching the net for codec to decode type 6 Tiff file. So I feel both appends are important a relative.

I was trying to tell conroy Chris was not writing he was wrong or incorrect. Because of the emotion conroy's append seem to convey to me. What's to like or not like?

"You may be amazed that anything could read the file, but I have many apps that can read it. Even Adobe Camera Raw can read it. Furthermore, if ACR is set to automatically open supported TIFFs, it does automatically open the OP's file. You may not like that, but it's true and my answer was and is correct."

JJMack

L

Lundberg02

Inspiring

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