Tagged Image File Format — uncompressed or lossless image format for DI and VFX pipelines. Industry standard for archival because quality stays intact across generations.
TIFF
In the VFX and DI workflow, you work with TIFF because it's the only sensible choice when quality is non-negotiable. While compositors and colorists can work with compressed formats (ProRes, DNxHD), every final VFX plate and every color pass lands in the archive as a TIFF sequence—uncompressed or with lossless compression. This isn't pedantry; it's good business sense: a corrupted ProRes file is lost, a corrupted TIFF can be reconstructed.
TIFF allows you several things simultaneously: 8-, 16-, or 32-bit depth depending on pipeline requirements, an alpha channel, metadata storage, and lossless compression (LZW, ZIP) for archives without quality loss. During DI mastering, every color-corrected frame is saved as TIFF because only uncompressed or losslessly compressed material meets the colorimetric requirements. You export from your compositing system (Nuke, Flame) into TIFF sequences for final quality control—one frame per file, numbered, organized in directory structures suitable for automation.
Practically, this means your VFX plates come in from the scan lab as uncompressed or LZW-compressed TIFFs. You composite in 16-bit (linearity), but also export again as TIFF for QC review and finally for the master archive. Long storage times? Yes. But that's precisely why studios have TIFF archives that are 10, 15 years old and still pixel-perfectly reproducible—while old ProRes codecs are long obsolete. The technical standard of the film industry demands TIFF for archival obligations; insurance only covers TIFF.
One disadvantage: file sizes. A 4K TIFF can weigh 100 MB, meaning a complete 90-minute sequence can easily be 150 GB or more. That's why the pipeline works in two tiers—fast proxy workflows with ProRes or DPX for daily operations, and the final TIFF archive at the end. For high-volume projects (large TV series, VFX-heavy movies), TIFF management becomes its own logistical problem: naming conventions, directory structures, backup strategies—everything must be documented, otherwise the most expensive resource (the final file) becomes unmanageable ballast.