| Format introduction | TIFF is a computer file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry and photographers. The TIFF format is widely supported by image-manipulation applications, by publishing and page layout applications, and by scanning, faxing, word processing, optical character recognition and other applications. | The ICO file format is an image file format for computer icons in Microsoft Windows. ICO files contain one or more small images at multiple sizes and color depths, such that they may be scaled appropriately. In Windows, all executables that display an icon to the user, on the desktop, in the Start Menu, or in Windows Explorer, must carry the icon in ICO format. |
| Technical details | A TIFF file, for example, can be a container holding JPEG (lossy) and PackBits (lossless) compressed images. A TIFF file also can include a vector-based clipping path (outlines, croppings, image frames). The ability to store image data in a lossless format makes a TIFF file a useful image archive. | An ICO file is made up of an ICONDIR ("Icon directory") structure, containing an ICONDIRENTRY structure for each image in the file, followed by a contiguous block of all image bitmap data (which may be in either Windows BMP format, excluding the BITMAPFILEHEADER structure, or in PNG format, stored in its entirety). |
| File extension | .tiff, .tif | .ico |
| MIME | image/tiff, image/tiff-fx | image/x-icon, image/vnd.microsoft.icon |
| Developed by | Adobe Systems | Microsoft |
| Type of format | Image file format | Graphics file format for computer icons |
| Associated programs | Microsoft Windows Photo Viewer, Corel PaintShop, GIMP, ACDSee, Adobe Photoshop | Axialis IconWorkshop, IcoFX, IconBuilder, Microangelo Toolset, Greenfish Icon Editor Pro, GIMP, ImageMagick, IrfanView, ResEdit. |
| Wiki | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagged_Image_File_Format | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICO_(file_format) |