Why TIFF files are so big
TIFF is a flexible format used by scanners, printers, archives and professional photographers. It often stores images with no compression or with lossless compression, sometimes with 16 bits per color channel. That keeps every detail, but a single scanned page can take tens of megabytes.
JPG uses lossy compression tuned to what human eyes notice. At high quality it looks almost the same on screen while taking a small fraction of the space.
TIFF can also hold several pages in one file, CMYK colors for printing and many compression types. That explains why one app opens a TIFF fine while another refuses it. When a TIFF holds several pages, FileKiwi converts only the first one.
When TIFF to JPG makes sense
- Sharing scans of documents, receipts or old family photos by email or chat.
- Uploading to websites and portals that accept only JPG or PNG.
- Viewing on a phone, where TIFF support is often missing.
- Building a web gallery from archive images.
Keep your TIFF originals if you plan to print large or edit heavily later. Treat the JPG as your everyday sharing copy.
Tips for scanned documents
For pages of text, a quality between 80% and 90% keeps letters readable while saving a lot of space. Scanning at 300 DPI is enough for most documents. Higher settings mostly add file size.
Need all pages in one file? Combine the JPG pages with the JPG to PDF tool afterwards. If a portal has a strict size limit, try compress image to 100 KB on each page.
For old photo prints, a 600 DPI scan leaves room to print larger later. Keep that scan as your TIFF master and convert a copy to JPG for family chats and social media.