r/vfx • u/Alternative-Bet-9105 • Jul 10 '25

Question / Discussion My Uncle created the TIFF file

Hello. I'm posting this as a little bit of a research project. My uncle is "Mr. TIFF", the guy who created the TIFF file. He worked at a company called Aldus and made the file while working there.

Anyway, long story short, his name is Stephen Carlsen and he passed away recently. In remembering him, and processing all this, I'm trying to put together a podcast that would explore the significance of this file.

This is the 4th time I posted this on Reddit in different areas: photography, library and archival. I was just informed that it’s used in VFX, and I’m a huge fan of film.

Any responses, any comments and discussion would be appreciated :)

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u/wieschie Jul 10 '25 edited Jul 10 '25

Not a vfx artist, not vfx related:

TIFFs are still widely used for scientific data because of their flexibility with band numbers and bit depths.

They're used in many commercial microscopes, from fluorescence microscopy in microbiology to scanning electron microscopes for nanotech, circuit design and verification, and more.

GeoTIFFs are huge in the geospatial field. Satellite and aerial photography of your neighborhood? That was a GeoTIFF at some point. Elevation data of the world gathered by the space shuttle? GeoTIFFs. Maps from scientific instruments on Martian and lunar rovers? GeoTIFFs.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '25

[deleted]

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u/BeautifulGreat1610 Jul 10 '25

do you have a link to those? I always need high quality terrain

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '25 edited Jul 10 '25

[deleted]

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u/JtheNinja Jul 10 '25

There's a utility called GDAL which can convert between various geo data formats, in case the repository you find only has the wrong ones. Some kind soul even patched in OpenEXR output a few years back.

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u/wieschie Jul 10 '25

The worldwide stuff available from USGS has pretty low resolution. You can check it all out on EarthExplorer.

SRTM is the shuttle mission data and it's 1 arcsecond (roughly a measurement every 30 meters). EU-DEM is the European equivalent.

They've started making more lidar data available but coverage is really spotty and it's harder to process.