Jeff writes, “I help a friend who uses a Mac with OS X and she needs to open and edit TIFF files. I can open them in the Mac’s Preview software, but I can’t find an application that allows a file to be edited and saved back to the TIFF format. Would you be able to help? Free software would be optimal. We are willing to purchase one that works well for editing TIFF files on a Mac if it has a reasonable price tag.”
The Photos app included with macOS supports editing and exporting TIFF files. For some reason the macOS Open With menu doesn’t make this obvious and recommends other applications instead. With the Photos app open, drag a TIFF file into the app. This automatically adds the file to your photo library. When you finish editing, simply export the file back out in TIFF format.
Editing images in Apple’s Photos app has limitiations compared to other options. For complex edits, choose a more feature-rich app better suited to the task of photo editing.
Software Options for Editing TIFF Files
For anything beyond the basics you need a more full-featured editor. The most feature-rich free option for editing TIFF images is the macOS version of GIMP. It’s a powerful image editor. There is a steep learning curve because the interface is clunky and complicated. The original version of GIMP was developed for Linux. The interface assumes users are expecting that same level of geekiness. The big plus for GIMP is number of available features, which is comparable to the full version of Photoshop.
For a reasonable price, Photoshop Elements does almost anything you need for basic image editing and provides a more consistent experience than GIMP.
UPDATE: Skip points out an extremely useful app I completely forgot: “You missed an old stand-by with your answer to this question. The app in question in Lemke Soft’s “Graphics Converter.” The app is so popular that Apple included a full version on every PPC PowerMac and PowerBook. It’s a great app and saved me a couple of times, even opening files that were corrupted and wouldn’t open in Photoshop Elements.” Graphics Converter is a great value at $30.
