Do TIFF Files Created In Photoshop Play Nicely with Photos App?

[JPM42]

I initially posted a thread on this in the iOS forum, but it didn't get any responses, so I thought this would be a better place for it, since my problem might be Adobe related.

The short of it, since iOS 8.3 (8.4 didn't fix this), it's impossible for me to import any TIFF files to the Photos app. When I import the files, and open the Photos app, the thumbnail will look normal, but upon opening the picture, the picture will be pixelated. It will do this whether iCloud Photo Library is turned on or off.

Initially, I thought this was an issue amongst all TIFF files that were imported into the Photos app. However, once I did some testing, I noticed that any TIFF files that were created, say, in the Preview app or any TIFF files I found on the web, did not have this problem. This only happens when I create the files in Photoshop. The files will pixelate, whether the TIFF file is compressed or not.

I've read other people also having this problem, including with the Mac version of the Photos app, which I don't have access to.

I'm using CS5, so I'm not sure if any other versions of Photoshop are doing this, and if anyone would be willing to try it out, that would be helpful, as I'd like to file a bug report with Apple, if necessary. My TIFF settings are LZW Compression, Interleaved Pixel Order, and set to IBM PC Byte order. I've played around with this, though, including turning off any compression, only for the same issues to occur.

If there's any other issues I'm overlooking, feel free to let me know. It would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[MisterMe]

TIFF is a standard graphics container format that was developed by Aldus which was later purchased by Adobe. The container holds several components, probably the most important of which is Baseline TIFF. This component may be bi-endian or little-endian byte order. Traditional Mac files are big-endian. Traditional Windows/DOS files are little-endian. The latest TIFF 6.0 standard mandates support for both byte-orders.

TIFF originated on the Mac. It was also the render graphics format for NeXTstep. TIFF maintained its role in OpenSTEP, MacOS X, and OS X. I can recall a time when Windows did not support TIFF natively. It was considered to be an Apple format that required installation of Quicktime for Windows. The point is that looking for a bug in the Mac implementation of TIFF is like looking for left-handed monkey wrenches.

Your problems with TIFF files appear to be isolated to files that you downloaded from the Internet. We have no idea how old these files are, which version of the TIFF standard they are supposed to comply with, or if they comply with any standard at all. That fact that your Adobe software cannot open files that are supposedly in an Adobe file format casts serious doubt on the standards-compliance of your source.

I have two suggestions:

1. Try opening your Internet TIFF files in Preview. If they open, then Save As... them in TIFF using a different name.
2. If not, then download and install GraphicConverter. Before you pay the license fee, GC is fully-functional nag ware. If GC can open your files, then Save As... them in TIFF using a different name. It should also give you all format information that is embedded in each file.

 

[JPM42]

Thank you very much for all the helpful information, MisterMe. Much appreciated.

Just to clarify, however, my problem isn't that I'm unable to open up files in Photoshop. The problem is, since iOS 8.3, any files that I create as TIFF files inside Photoshop will not display properly in the Photos app. The thumbnail will look fine in the Photos app, however, when tapping to display the photo, the picture appears smaller and completely pixelated.

What's strange is that if I create a TIFF file inside of Preview, with the same compression guidelines, the photo will open up just fine in the Photos app.

So it seems that, for some reason, the Photos app doesn't like taking any TIFF files from TIFFs that were created in Photoshop. Which makes me think that this could be an Adobe issue, but I'm not sure exactly what it could be, when everything worked perfectly fine prior to 8.3.

 

[MisterMe]

It sounds like Photos is seeing only your CS5 thumbnails since your iOS 8.3 upgrade.

Open and save one of these files in Preview to see if that makes a difference.

 

[dwig]

...My TIFF settings are LZW Compression, Interleaved Pixel Order, and set to IBM PC Byte order. ...

This is far from a complete list of the options involved.

Be sure your Ps TIFFs are RGB, 8bit, and saved without layers. Also experiment with converting the Ps TIFFs to use sRGB profile and don't save the profile in the exported TIFF. Additional experiments would be to reduce the file size in pixels to see if there is a threshold over which Photos chokes.

If there is any attribute in the TIFF that Photos can't process it will fall back to using the preview instead of rendering the actual TIFF data.