TIFF is the format EXIF was built on, so it can hold more metadata than almost anything else: camera details, GPS, XMP, IPTC and a color profile. What actually survives a conversion depends on the software. We ran a GPS-tagged photo through Pillow and ImageMagick, read every tag in the results, and found they keep very different things.
Yes, and more room for it than almost any other image format. EXIF, the metadata block cameras write into JPEGs, is itself built on TIFF's tag structure. In a TIFF file, those tags sit right in the main header. A TIFF can carry the full set: EXIF, GPS, XMP, IPTC and a color profile.
| Tag | Tag number | What it can reveal |
|---|---|---|
| Make, Model, Software | 271, 272, 305 | Camera, scanner or editing app |
| Artist, Copyright | 315, 33432 | A person's name, often filled in by the camera or scanner software |
| DateTime | 306 | When the file was created or last saved |
| EXIF sub-IFD | 34665 | Exposure, lens, original capture date |
| GPS sub-IFD | 34853 | Latitude, longitude, altitude |
| XMP | 700 | Author, rights, edit history, keywords, sometimes location |
| IPTC | 33723 | Caption, byline, credit (news and stock photos) |
| ICC profile | 34675 | Color profile; can name the device or software |
Scanners usually fill in make, model, software and resolution, and some scanning apps add an artist name from your computer's user account. Cameras that save TIFF, and raw formats built on TIFF like DNG and Nikon's NEF, carry full EXIF including GPS if location was on.
It depends on the software, and the results are less predictable than you'd think. We took a phone-style JPEG with EXIF (camera, an author name and GPS coordinates), an XMP block and a color profile, converted it to TIFF several ways, and read every tag in each output with a script that walks the TIFF structure.
| Route | Size | Camera EXIF | GPS | XMP (author name) | Color profile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Original JPEG (phone-style) | 294 KB | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pillow 11.3, default save | 5,761 KB | No | No | No | Yes |
| Pillow 11.3, EXIF passed in | 5,761 KB | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| ImageMagick 6.9, plain convert | 5,761 KB | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| ImageMagick 6.9, ZIP or JPEG compression | 2,437 KB / 486 KB | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| ImageMagick 6.9 with -strip | 5,760 KB | No | No | No | No |
Two things stand out. Pillow, the Python library behind a lot of web converters, drops EXIF and GPS unless the code passes them in on purpose, but then it keeps them completely. ImageMagick did the reverse on our version: it dropped the EXIF and GPS but kept the XMP, so the author name was still in the file. Neither tool kept everything, and neither removed everything without being told to.
The compression type made no difference to metadata. ZIP and JPEG-compressed TIFFs kept the same tags as the uncompressed one. It just changed the size.
Sometimes. A TIFF with full EXIF and GPS, re-saved by ImageMagick as TIFF, came out with only its color profile. Re-saving or rotating it in Pillow did the same. Converting that TIFF to JPEG dropped the EXIF in both tools unless we told Pillow to copy it, and then the GPS came straight across.
The catch runs the other way with XMP. When we converted ImageMagick's TIFF to JPEG, the XMP and the author name went along with it. "I converted it, so it's clean" isn't safe with TIFF. What survives depends on which block the data is in and which program does the converting. Check the output instead of trusting the route.
Each page in a multi-page TIFF has its own set of tags, so metadata can sit on any page, not just the first. Fax software and document scanners make a lot of these. In our test, a 3-page ImageMagick TIFF kept the XMP and color profile, and -strip removed them and kept all three pages. Some converters only keep the first page when they convert, so count the pages afterwards.
Our EXIF viewer reads TIFF files in your browser. On our Pillow TIFF it showed the camera, the author name and the GPS coordinates, along with a location warning. It lists the TIFF structure tags too (strip offsets, bits per sample), which you can ignore.
It doesn't show XMP. On the ImageMagick TIFF it found no EXIF or GPS, which was correct, but it didn't surface the author name sitting in the XMP block. For that, open the TIFF in a text editor and search for xmpmeta or your name. XMP is stored as plain text, so a hit means it's there. ExifTool reads every block, including XMP and IPTC, if you want the full list.
convert in.tif -strip out.tif with ImageMagick removed everything in our tests, including the color profile, and kept all pages. ExifTool's -all= does the same without re-encoding the image.For how other formats compare, see does GIF keep metadata and do PNG files have metadata.
They can. EXIF is built on TIFF's own tag structure, so a TIFF can hold camera details, dates, GPS coordinates, XMP, IPTC and a color profile. Whether a particular TIFF has them depends on the camera, scanner or converter that made it.
It depends on the software. In our tests ImageMagick 6.9 dropped EXIF and GPS but kept XMP, and Pillow dropped everything except the color profile unless the EXIF was passed in, in which case it kept the GPS.
Run convert in.tif -strip out.tif with ImageMagick, or exiftool -all= in.tif. Both remove EXIF, GPS, XMP and the color profile. ImageMagick kept every page of a multi-page TIFF in our test.
Yes. A browser-based EXIF viewer can read TIFF tags, including GPS, even though Chrome and Firefox can't display TIFF images. XMP may not show up, so search the file for xmpmeta in a text editor as well.
Usually some. Scanners and scanning apps typically write the device make and model, software, resolution and date, and some add an artist name from the computer's user account. Scans rarely include GPS.