How to Convert AVIF to TIFF in Your Browser

How AVIF becomes TIFF

1. The browser's AV1 image decoder unpacks the AVIF's compressed frame data — support for this depends on the browser, since AVIF decoding isn't universal the way JPEG's is.
2. Decoding happens through the browser's standard image canvas, which represents pixels at 8 bits per channel — this is the step where any higher bit depth in the source gets flattened, regardless of which format you're converting to.
3. If the AVIF is animated, only the first frame is drawn to that canvas; the rest of the sequence is never read.
4. The resulting 8-bit RGBA pixel grid is written into an uncompressed TIFF with no further compression or color adjustment applied.

What changes when you convert

This is the pair where a real capability gets left behind: AVIF can store 10-bit or 12-bit HDR image data, but this conversion pipeline decodes through a standard 8-bit canvas before anything is written to TIFF. That happens no matter what target format you pick — it's worth calling out specifically here because TIFF's own reputation as an archival, high-fidelity format can make it easy to assume the conversion is a lossless upgrade. It isn't: an HDR AVIF source becomes an 8-bit-per-channel TIFF, the same as it would converting to any other target.

Alpha transparency, by contrast, carries through cleanly — AVIF's alpha channel is preserved in the RGBA TIFF output at full 8-bit precision.

As with other animated sources, an animated AVIF becomes a single still frame, and file size grows substantially: AVIF is built for aggressive compression at high quality, while the TIFF output here is intentionally uncompressed.

When TIFF is the right choice — and when it isn't

TIFF is worth using when a downstream tool needs an uncompressed still image and doesn't require AVIF's HDR range — print production and document scanning are the clearest examples, and neither typically supports HDR data anyway, so the bit-depth reduction described above often doesn't cost you anything you were going to use.

If preserving AVIF's HDR range or small file size actually matters, converting to TIFF is the wrong move — no target on this site retains bit depth above 8 bits, since all of them go through the same 8-bit canvas decode. For a compact web-ready file, keep it as AVIF or use WebP; for simple legacy compatibility, BMP; for an icon, ICO.

Limitations and privacy

The bit-depth flattening described above is a real, permanent loss for HDR AVIF sources — there's no way to recover it after conversion, and it's a limitation of the browser-based decode step itself rather than of TIFF specifically. Animation, if present, is also reduced to a single first frame.

AVIF decoding support varies by browser; where it isn't supported, the file simply fails to decode rather than producing a corrupted result. All processing, when it works, happens locally without uploading the file anywhere.