TIFF 6.0 Specification
Final—June 3, 1992
TIFF Administration
Information and Support
The most recent version of the TIFF specification is available in PDF format on
the Adobe WWW and ftp servers See the cover page of the specification for the
required addresses.
Because of the widespread use of TIFF for in many environments, Adobe is un-
able to provide a general consulting service for TIFF implementors. TIFF devel-
opers are encouraged to study sample TIFF files, read TIFF documentation
thoroughly, and work with developers of other products that are important to you.
If your TIFF question specifically concerns compatibility with an Adobe Systems
product, please contact Adobe Developer Support at devsup-person@adobe.com.
Most companies that use TIFF can answer questions about support for TIFF in
their products. Contact the appropriate product manager or developer support
service group.
Private Fields and Values
An organization might wish to store information meaningful to only that organi-
zation in a TIFF file. Tags numbered 32768 or higher, sometimes called private
tags, are reserved for that purpose.
Upon request, the TIFF administrator (send email to devsup-person@adobe.com)
will allocate and register one or more private tags for an organization, to avoid
possible conflicts with other organizations. You do not need to tell the TIFF ad-
ministrator what you plan to use them for, but giving us this information may help
other developers to avoid some duplication of effort. We will likely make the tag
database public at some point.
Private enumerated values can be accommodated in a similar fashion. For ex-
ample, you may wish to experiment with a new compression scheme within TIFF.
Enumeration constants numbered 32768 or higher are reserved for private usage.
Upon request, the administrator will allocate and register one or more enumerated
values for a particular field (Compression, in our example), to avoid possible
conflicts.
Tags and values allocated in the private number range are not prohibited from
being included in a future revision of this specification. Several such instances
exist in the current TIFF specification.
Do not choose your own tag numbers. Doing so could cause serious compatibility
problems in the future. However, if there is little or no chance that your TIFF files
will escape your private environment, please consider using TIFF tags in the
“reusable” 65000-65535 range. You do not need to contact Adobe when using
numbers in this range.
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