2002.07.06 10:45 "Random-access TIFF files", by Jon Saxton

I don't really expect much interest in this but for what it is worth I have posted a specification for an extension to TIFF allowing for direct access to individual images without traversing the IFD chain. The extension is totally transparent to "normal" TIFF readers.

The concept was developed by me to satisfy a specific need, namely to be able to retrieve small groups of images from TIFF files containing as many as 45,000 images. This came about because we didn't really want to invent an entirely new format for storing our images. TIFF was perfectly adequate except for the lack of direct access, and we usually need to extract and ship images as TIFF anyway.

In our database we store image location information as TIFF file name and image sequence number (0 origin).

Anyway, the document is one click off my home page...

Jon Saxton <js@triton.vg>
Developer of cross-platform software for UNIX, OS/2 and Win32
U.S. agent for Triton Technologies International Ltd
http://www.triton.vg/