LibTIFF

libtiff is an open-source software library for reading and writing files in the Tagged Image File Format (TIFF). It provides a portable C library that implements TIFF and related extensions, allowing applications to parse, create, and modify TIFF images. The library is designed to be a robust, standards-compliant backend used by many image processing tools and workflows.

Key features include support for standard TIFF and BigTIFF, a wide range of compression schemes (including LZW, Deflate/ZIP, PackBits, JPEG, and CCITT Group 3/4 for bilevel data), tiling, multi-page TIFFs, and a comprehensive tag set. It also handles metadata formats commonly embedded in TIFFs, such as EXIF, IPTC, and XMP, and georeferencing information present in GeoTIFF files. The library is designed to be efficient, with options for streaming I/O and memory-mapped access in some builds.

Development and licensing: LibTIFF is released under a permissive open-source license and is maintained by a community of volunteers. It originated in the early era of TIFF tooling and is widely used as the baseline TIFF implementation in many software packages. The project provides C APIs and can be extended via bindings to other languages, making it a common backend for image editing, viewing, and conversion software.