RAW2TIFF(1)

NAME
raw2tiff - create a TIFF file from a raw data file

SYNOPSIS

raw2tiff [ options ] *input.raw output.tif

DESCRIPTION

raw2tiff converts a raw byte sequence into TIFF. By default, the TIFF image is created with data samples packed (PlanarConfiguration=1), compressed with the PackBits algorithm (Compression=32773), and with each strip no more than 8 kilobytes. These characteristics can overridden, or explicitly specified with the options described below.

OPTIONS

-H number
    Size of input image file header in bytes (0 by default). This amount of data just will be skipped from the start of file while reading.

-w number
    Width of input image in pixels (can be guessed, see Guessing the image geometry below).

option
    -b number

    number of bands in input image (1 by default).

-d datatype
    type of samples in input image, where datatype may be one of:
    Data type | Description
    byte | 8-bit unsigned integer (default)
    short | 16-bit unsigned integer
    long | 32-bit unsigned integer
    sbyte | 8-bit signed integer
    sshort | 16-bit signed integer
    slong | 32-bit signed integer
    float | 32-bit IEEE floating point
    double | 64-bit IEEE floating point

-i config
    type of sample interleaving in input image, where config may be one of:
    Configuration | Description
    pixel | pixel interleaved data (default)
    band | band interleaved data.

-p photo
    photometric interpretation (color space) of the input image, where photo may be one of:
    Photometric | Description
    miniswhite | white color represented with 0 value
    minisblack | black color represented with 0 value (default)
    rgb | image has RGB color model
    cmyk | image has CMYK (separated) color model
    ycbcr | image has YCbCr color model
    cielab | image has CIE L*a*b color model
    icclab | image has ICC L*a*b color model
    itulab | image has ITU L*a*b color model

-s  swap bytes fetched from the input file.

-L  input data has LSB2MSB bit order (default).

-M  input data has MSB2LSB bit order.

-c  Specify a compression scheme to use when writing image data: -c none for no compression, -c packbits for the PackBits compression algorithm (the default), -c jpeg for the baseline JPEG compression algorithm, -c zip for the Deflate compression algorithm, -c lzw for Lempel-Ziv & Welch.

GUESSING THE IMAGE GEOMETRY

raw2tif can guess image width and height in case one or both of these parameters are not specified. If you omit one of those parameters, the complementary one will be calculated based on the file size (taking into account header size, number of bands and data type). If you omit both parameters, the statistical approach will be used. Utility will compute correlation coefficient between two lines at the image center using several appropriate line sizes and the highest absolute value of the coefficient will indicate the right line size. That is why you should be cautious with the very large images, because guessing process may take a while (depending on your system performance). Of course, the utility can't guess the header size, number of bands and data type, so it should be specified manually. If you don't know anything about your image, just try with the several combinations of those options.

There is no magic, it is just a mathematical statistics, so it can be wrong in some cases. But for most ordinary images guessing method will work fine.

SEE ALSO

pal2rgb (1), tiffinfo (1), tiffcp (1), tiffmedian (1), /functions/libtiff (3tiff)

AUTHOR
LibTIFF contributors

COPYRIGHT
1988-2025, LibTIFF contributors