tiff workflow

• scan methods
• lighten/darken pages
• erase borders, areas, or despeckle

• requires imagemagick command line tools
• density defines resolution of output image
• units should be given, or else the file units will be undefined, and programs such as GraphicConverter will make the file 72dpi, which will cause conversion problems
• page defines the canvas size, and will crop the image as necessary
• example:

  convert -density 150 -units PixelsPerInch -page letter SN-085.pdf SN-085.tif

• requires Ghostscript (seems slower than imagemagick method, although imagemagick uses gs with the pnmraw output device)
• -q = quiet mode
• -dNOPAUSE = don't pause and ask questions after each page
• -r = custom resolution
• -sPAPERSIZE will force the output to be a proper papersize - this actually crops the page to this size which works well when the page is larger than represented and contains crop information
• example:

  gs -q -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=tiff24nc -r150 -sPAPERSIZE=letter -sOutputFile=a.tif a.pdf -c quit

• requires libtiff

tiffsplit input.tif

• edit individual files (each page should be a file) as necessary using any graphics program, such as Adobe Photoshop, GraphicConverter etc… (GraphicConverter can edit multi-page tiff files, and keep them intact, although it changes the resolution to 72dpi so you need to run the convert -density command again to fix the file)
• since individual tiff files are not the final work product, it would be best to not use compression, since some tools do not work well with certain compression schemes

• requires libtiff
  • single file (no compression):

    tiff2pdf -p letter -o output.pdf input.pdf

  • single file (zip compression):

    tiff2pdf -z -p letter -o output.pdf input.pdf

  • single file (jpeg compression, 60% quality):

    tiff2pdf -j -q60 -p letter -o output.pdf input.pdf

  • single file (zip compression, with document metadata):

    tiff2pdf -z -p letter -cprogramname -aauthorname -tdocumenttitle -sdocumentsubject -o output.pdf input.pdf

  • multiple files:

    ls -1L *.tif | while read file;do
    tiff2pdf -p letter -o "${file}".pdf "${file}"
    done

• requires Ghostscript

  • tiff2ps -2 a.tif | gs -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=a.pdf - -c quit

• requires libtiff

  tiffutil -cat x*.tif -out test.tif

  • this example uses the -c flag, which is set to lzw compression for much smaller files

    tiffcp -c lzw x*.tif output2.tif

• requires imagemagick command line tools

  convert -adjoin x*.tif output.tif

• requires pdftk
• this example does not include compression, so with uncompressed tif images, the file size is very large

pdftk *.pdf cat output combined.pdf

• requires libtiff
  • compress file using lzw compression:

    tiffcp -c lzw input.tif output.tif

  • convert to grayscale, and use lzw compression:

    tiff2bw -c lzw input.tif output.tif

  • compress file using CCITT Group 4 compression:(The CCITT Group 3 and Group 4 compression algorithms can only be used with bilevel data - 1 bit black and white images)

    tiffcp -c g4 input.tif output.tif

• requires imagemagick command line tools
  • convert to 1-bit, using CCITT Group 4 compression (black and white)

    convert -monochrome -compress Groupt4 input.tif output.tif

  • convert to 1-bit (black and white) specifying threshold for black:

    convert -monochrome -black-threshold 35768 input.tif output.tif

• convert a bunch of files into monochrome 1-bit images, with CCITT Group 4 compression, then combine them into one multipage tiff file, and finally convert them into one pdf file using zip compression:

  ls -1L x*.tif|while read file; do convert -monochrome -compress Group4 "${file}" "${file}".bw.tif; done
  
  tiffutil -cat *.bw.tif -out tifoutput.tif
  
  tiff2pdf -z -p letter -o output.pdf tifoutput.tif