utif

What is utif?

The utif npm package is a library for parsing and encoding TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) images. It allows users to decode TIFF files into a format that can be used in web applications and to encode image data into TIFF format.

What are utif's main functionalities?

Decoding TIFF images

This feature allows you to decode TIFF images into a usable format. The code sample reads a TIFF file, decodes it, and converts it to an RGBA buffer.

const UTIF = require('utif');
const fs = require('fs');

const tiffData = fs.readFileSync('image.tiff');
const ifds = UTIF.decode(tiffData);
UTIF.decodeImage(tiffData, ifds[0]);
const rgba = UTIF.toRGBA8(ifds[0]);
// rgba now contains a Uint8Array of the image data

Encoding images to TIFF

This feature allows you to encode image data into a TIFF file. The code sample creates a new TIFF file from a given RGBA buffer.

const UTIF = require('utif');
const fs = require('fs');

const width = 800, height = 600;
const rgba = new Uint8Array(width * height * 4); // Replace with actual image data
const tiff = UTIF.encodeImage(rgba, width, height);
fs.writeFileSync('output.tiff', new Buffer(tiff));

Other packages similar to utif

sharp

Sharp is a high-performance Node.js image processing library that can convert large images in common formats to smaller, web-friendly JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, AVIF, and TIFF images. It is faster than utif as it's built on libvips which is a fast image processing library, but it does much more than just handling TIFF images.

image-size

This package is used to get dimensions of any image file without fully decoding it. It supports a variety of formats, including TIFF. It is not a full-fledged image processing library like utif but is useful for quickly obtaining image metadata.

jimp

Jimp is an image processing library for Node.js that allows for editing and manipulation of images in various formats, including TIFF. It is less focused on TIFF specifically compared to utif and offers a broader range of image manipulation features.

tiff

The 'tiff' npm package is a pure JavaScript implementation for TIFF encoding and decoding. It is similar to utif in functionality but may differ in API, performance, and additional features.

README

UTIF.js

A small, fast and advanced TIFF / EXIF (+ DNG, CR2, NEF and other TIFF-ish files) decoder and encoder. It is the main TIFF library for Photopea image editor. Try to open your TIFF file with Photopea to see, if UTIF.js can parse it.

• Supports Black & White, Grayscale, RGB and Paletted images
• Supports Fax 3 and Fax 4 (CCITT), JPEG, LZW, PackBits and other compressions (1,3,4,5,6,7,8,32773,32809)
• E.g. this 8 MPix image with Fax 4 compression is just 56 kB ( Open in Photopea )

For RAW files, UTIF.js only decodes raw sensor data (and JPG previews, if there are any). It does not convert the raw data into a displayable image (RGBA). Such conversion is complex and out of scope of this library.

Installation

Download and include the UTIF.js file in your code. If you're in NodeJS or otherwise using NPM, run:

npm install utif

UTIF.decode(buffer)

• buffer: ArrayBuffer containing TIFF or EXIF data
• returns an array of "IFDs" (image file directories). Each IFD is an object, keys are "tXYZ" (XYZ is a TIFF tag number), values are values of these tags. You can get the the dimension (and other properties, "metadata") of the image without decompressing pixel data.

UTIF.decodeImage(buffer, ifd)

• buffer: ArrayBuffer containing TIFF or EXIF data
• ifd: the element of the output of UTIF.decode()
• If there is an image inside the IFD, it is decoded and three new properties are added to the IFD:
• • width: the width of the image
• • height: the height of the image
• • data: decompressed pixel data of the image

TIFF files may have various number of channels and various color depth. The interpretation of data depends on many tags (see the TIFF 6 specification). The following function converts any TIFF image into a 8-bit RGBA image.

UTIF.toRGBA8(ifd)

• ifd: image file directory (element of "ifds" returned by UTIF.decode(), processed by UTIF.decodeImage())
• returns Uint8Array of the image in RGBA format, 8 bits per channel (ready to use in context2d.putImageData() etc.)

Example

function imgLoaded(e) {
  var ifds = UTIF.decode(e.target.response);
  UTIF.decodeImage(e.target.response, ifds[0])
  var rgba  = UTIF.toRGBA8(ifds[0]);  // Uint8Array with RGBA pixels
  console.log(ifds[0].width, ifds[0].height, ifds[0]);
}

var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open("GET", "my_image.tif");
xhr.responseType = "arraybuffer";
xhr.onload = imgLoaded;   xhr.send();

Use TIFF images in HTML

If you are not a programmer, you can use TIFF images directly inside the <img> element of HTML. Then, it is enough to call UTIF.replaceIMG() once at some point.

UTIF.replaceIMG()

<body onload="UTIF.replaceIMG()">
...
<img src="image.tif" />  <img src="dog.tif" /> ...

And UTIF.js will do the rest. Internally, the "src" attribute of the image will be replaced with a new URI of the image (base64-encoded PNG). Note, that you can also insert DNG, CR2, NEF and other raw images into HTML this way.

Encoding TIFF images

You should not save images into TIFF format in the 21st century. Save them as PNG instead (e.g. using UPNG.js). If you still want to use TIFF format for some reason, here it is.

UTIF.encodeImage(rgba, w, h, metadata)

• rgba: ArrayBuffer containing RGBA pixel data
• w: image width
• h: image height
• metadata [optional]: IFD object (see below)
• returns ArrayBuffer of the binary TIFF file. No compression right now.

UTIF.encode(ifds)

• ifds: array of IFDs (image file directories). An IFD is a JS object with properties "tXYZ" (where XYZ are TIFF tags)
• returns ArrayBuffer of binary data. You can use it to encode EXIF data.

Dependencies

TIFF format sometimes uses Inflate algorithm for compression (but it is quite rare). Right now, UTIF.js calls Pako.js for the Inflate method.