Photo saves as both .tif and .tiff

[Guest]

I have batch processed a lot of photos. They have been saved as .tif files. I have then had to work on a few of the original JPEGs and exported them as TIFFs. I hoped to be able to overwrite/replace the batch processed files, but when exporting Affinity Photo uses .tiff. This is bonkers. I now have duplicate files some with the .tif file name and some with the .tiff file name.

Surely AP should just be using one of the other - not both?

[D23]

Yes, I totally agree, confusing

[- S -]

Agree, they should all default to *.tif (with both *.tif and *.tiff visible in the file explorer).  It drives me absolutely nuts.

 

[firstdefence]

.TIF is a legacy of the 8.3 file naming format where the 3 would have been the extension denoting the type of file, when NTFS came along that restriction was lifted and extensions could be longer as in .TIFF .You can rename the extension from .TIF to .TIFF or visa versa .TIFF to .TIF with no ill affects.

I think Lightroom likes .TIF over .TIFF

This is a lot of TIFFing.

[Guest]

The pertinant thing is that Affinity Photo bizarrely saves batch files as .tif and Exported files as .tiff !

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Markeeee said:

The pertinant thing is that Affinity Photo bizarrely saves batch files as .tif and Exported files as .tiff !

Even more bizarre, if I try to rename a TIFF export with a '.tif' extension, Affinity Photo won't let me do that:

[walt.farrell]

8 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Even more bizarre, if I try to rename a TIFF export with a '.tif' extension, Affinity Photo won't let me do that:
 

On Windows, in the export dialog, you can specify the file name as, e.g.,  "test.tif" where the use of the " marks around the name tells Windows to use the name exactly as entered, without using any filetype supplied by the application.

[firstdefence]

This is a note for the devs I think, one needs to be consistent and I think TIFF is the future.

[R C-R]

22 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

On Windows, in the export dialog, you can specify the file name as, e.g.,  "test.tif" where the use of the " marks around the name tells Windows to use the name exactly as entered, without using any filetype supplied by the application.

Not on Macs. The result of that would be for example "test.tif".tiff, with the quotation marks becoming part of the file name.

[- S -]

3 hours ago, firstdefence said:

This is a note for the devs I think, one needs to be consistent and I think TIFF is the future.

No, *.tif is still the future, there is no reason to make users suddenly start using the *.tiff file extension, just because.  

Although 'technically' *.tif and *.tiff are interchangeable, all the software I've used over the years, from raw converters, to flatbed scanner software, to film scanning software, to imaging editing programs have all used *.tif and they continue to do so.  Although they didn't necessarily have to, it was something they just did out of consistency.  That and there was no reason to start using *.tiff, as it offers no advantages and *.tif was already widely adopted everywhere.  Affinity Photo is the only software I've used where it defaults to *.tiff and it's not possible for me the user to even change that.  There is no benefit, only inconsistency with what people have already been using for a long time.

I have tens of thousands of photos spanning almost 100 years—dating back to the 1920's—and they are all in *.tif format.  I have no intention to start mixing *.tif and *.tiff because of just one piece of software, especially as they will likely outlive that software application, so for me to continue saving with a *.tif file extension it means I have to remember to manually change the file extension in the 'Save as' dialogue to .tif every single time I open an original, edit it and export the post-processed file to another folder. It's beyond tedious and error prone.

In addition to that, it also means that when I export it to a folder with other images, I can't see any of the other *.tif files that are already in that folder, as the 'Save as' dialogue will only show *.tiff files.  In the below screenshot is a folder with 35 TIFF images already in it, but I am unable to see any of those images because they are all *.tif, not *.tiff.  This *.tiff malarkey needs to either change so that it defaults to *.tif as standard, or give the user the option to override the default setting and be able to make it default to *.tif themselves.

[firstdefence]

Shouldn't that be 35 TIF images  

TIFF has been around a long time so I wouldn't consider it to be a sudden file extension change, TiF has been around since Aldus created it in the 80's but but TIFF has been around since the mid 90's so "suddenly" really doesn't cut it, unless you're Billy Ocean 

I'm not on Windows, I'm Mac and I can only "Save As" to an .afphoto file, I can't "Save As" to TIFF. I have to use the Export.. feature to save as a TIFF file but I can see TIF files when I "Save As" albeit greyed out.

Even the mighty Photoshops "Save As" has TIFF not TIF and also "Open" has TIFF, the difference here is that Adobe software doesn't consider the TIF naming convention a distinct and separate format, they obviously see TIF as TIFF and TIFF as TIF, this is what Affinity should have done, after all the only change here is the letter "F" for "Format" nothing else has changed.

The problem isn't with the extension it's that Affinity have not identified TIF as being the same as TIFF. I would consider this an oversight but its not a calamity and should be easily fixed, so contact the devs to correct it, they might just squeeze it into the 1.7 update if you do it sharpish.

[Guest]

I've created a new post on this forum in the Bug section, so hopefully a developer will see it.

[Alfred]

2 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Shouldn't that be 35 TIF images 

No, it shouldn’t! A TIFF image is a TIFF image, regardless of whether the filename extension has one f or two. I regularly use the .jpg extension rather than .jpeg or .jpe, but they’re all JPEGs.

15 minutes ago, Markeeee said:

I've created a new post on this forum in the Bug section, so hopefully a developer will see it.

The new thread is here, for those wondering.

[Wosven]

In Photoshop the option is to save as TIFF, but the extension is .tif

I use this difference between .TIFF and .TIF to distinguish Affinity and scanner .TIFF from Adobe .TIF (Affinity or scanner's TIFF will open as 1 layer in Photoshop, multilayer TIF from Photoshop will open as multilayer in Photoshop and multilayer Affinity TIFF will open as such in Affinity apps, etc.).

At first I wanted all the extensions to be TIF, but in the long run it's more usefull this way for me.

[Fixx]

2 minutes ago, Wosven said:

I use this difference between .TIFF and .TIF to distinguish Affinity and scanner

Oh boy, I consider that a bit risky as it is so small difference and can cause mixups. I prefer to differentiate workflowwise by using different formats (TIF, PSD, etc).

[Wosven]

I never used PSD, since a long time ago you couldn't import PSD in QXP, and it was better to use TIFF, keeping pathes, alpha channels and layers (at the time I suspected TIFF and PSD were similar, but TIFF give smaller file size).
Since at the time other apps could give preview or open TIFF files (without Adobe layers), it was the best choice.

Import and preview of PSD came later, but I saw no reason to use it (I didn't read the TIFF specifications and supposed Adobe was using a regular format… I thought in the long run I could open and use those easier than PSD files).