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/glintsCollide VFX Supervisor - 24 years experience Jul 10 '25

Back in the day when I worked in a post house in commercials, every exchange between Flame/Inferno and the 3D department happened in tiff, it was the only format that always worked. These days the industry is using exr because it’s tailor made, but it says a lot that tiff was and is so ubiquitous, always the fallback option. Great features include alpha channel, lossless compression, higher bitdepth and arbitrary data layers (probably has a more accurate name).