Install libtiff with Homebrew, dnf, Nix, pacman, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• fax2ps
• fax2tiff
• pal2rgb
• ppm2tiff
• raw2tiff
• tiff2bw
• tiff2pdf
• tiff2ps
• tiff2rgba
• tiffcmp
• tiffcp
• tiffcrop
• tiffdither
• tiffdump
• tiffinfo
• tiffmedian
• tiffset
• tiffsplit

Project history

The LibTIFF license and README preserve the original authorship line: copyright 1988-1997 Sam Leffler and 1991-1997 Silicon Graphics. The project documentation describes a library for reading and writing TIFF images plus a collection of tools for manipulating TIFF files.

The project moved through several hosting eras. The README points users to libtiff.gitlab.io and simplesystems.org documentation, OSGeo downloads, and the GitLab source repository, while noting that older Bugzilla issues were migrated to GitLab.

A major evolution point was LibTIFF 4.0.0, whose release notes document BigTIFF support and 64-bit offset work. BigTIFF addressed classic TIFF's 32-bit-offset limit by defining a 64-bit larger-than-4GB TIFF variant.

Adoption history

LibTIFF became standard infrastructure because TIFF itself remained common in archival, print, fax, geospatial, and scientific image data. The input metadata shows packaging in Homebrew, Fedora, Nix, Arch, and openSUSE, and the upstream docs emphasize portability across Unix-like systems and Windows.

The tool set also helped adoption: utilities such as tiffinfo, tiffdump, tiffcp, tiffset, and tiffsplit make the package useful even when no application links the library directly. Upstream's 4.6.0 and 4.7.0 notes about archiving and restoring tools show how much packagers notice the command-line surface.

How it is used

Developers link libtiff to read and write TIFF image data, inspect directories and tags, and handle compression and multi-image files. Users and packagers also rely on the bundled tools for metadata inspection, conversion, splitting, copying, and repair-style workflows.

Because TIFF is a container-like image format with many tags, compression modes, and historical edge cases, LibTIFF often serves as the shared compatibility layer instead of each application implementing the format independently.

Why package nerds care

LibTIFF is the sort of dependency package managers keep sharp because so many unrelated tools inherit its parser and utilities. Security fixes, format-corner-case behavior, and command availability can affect image viewers, document converters, GIS tools, scanner stacks, and scientific pipelines.

Its history also tracks format evolution: classic TIFF, BigTIFF, long-lived command-line utilities, and a project migration from older web infrastructure to GitLab-backed documentation and issue tracking.

Timeline

• 1988: Sam Leffler copyright begins for LibTIFF.
• 1991: Silicon Graphics copyright begins, marking the SGI era of the project.
• 2011: LibTIFF 4.0.0 release notes document BigTIFF support and 64-bit offset changes.
• 2023: LibTIFF 4.6.0 moves many older tools to archived or unsupported source categories and stops building them by default.
• 2024: LibTIFF 4.7.0 restores the removed tools to the default build.
• 2025: The documentation copyright line reaches 1988-2025 for LibTIFF contributors.

Related projects

• TIFF 6.0 and BigTIFF are the core file-format specifications around LibTIFF. ImageMagick, GDAL, scanning software, document converters, and many image viewers commonly sit nearby in distribution dependency graphs.

Sources

• https://gitlab.com/libtiff/libtiff/-/raw/master/README.md
• https://libtiff.gitlab.io/libtiff/
• https://libtiff.gitlab.io/libtiff/project/license.html
• https://libtiff.gitlab.io/libtiff/releases/historical.html
• https://libtiff.gitlab.io/libtiff/releases/v4.0.0.html
• https://libtiff.gitlab.io/libtiff/specification/bigtiff.html