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Comment by mceachen | Hacker News Reader

TIFF, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagged_Image_File_Format has been around since 1993. It supports layers. It supports compression. It supports paged(!) images. It has well-defined supported image encoding formats. It's already supported by all the image editing software you've ever used (from this millennia).

We have a Standard Layered Image Format. HURRAY. NEXT PROBLEM, PLEASE.

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Image formats have come a long way. I think the author wants an image format that can replace .psd in a sensible way. TIFF sadly cannot do that. While it can contain layered raster data, it lacks a lot of other capabilities. The author explicitly mentions vector layers, but if you want parity with .PSD you're looking at also having to support adjustment layers (hue/curves/levels/etc), blending modes, opacity/fill, raster masks, clipping masks, vector masks, locks, annotations, guides, grids, gradients, tags, text, comps, channels, and countless other things I can't even think to list (I wont even dive into smart objects). Keep in mind that's just the layer data, there's tons of other metadata in the format as well. It is a behemoth of a file format, and the years of backwards compatibility inside of it have multiplied that complexity to levels of insanity. I have .psd files that if I enable backwards compatibility when saving will increase the file size by half a gig. Granted those are enormous source files to begin with, but with higher def screens on the horizon file sizes are increasing dramatically. Having something more sensible than .PSD is something we're going to have to deal with sooner or later.

Anything that TIFF lacks can be added using custom tags. All people need to do is to agree on names and types for these custom tags that store the new information. This means any old app will still be able to work with such TIFF files and just ignore the information it doesn't understand. So the problem isn't solved but the answer is not coming up with yet-another-file-format.

A good example of extending TIFF with tags is Pixar's PhotoRealistic RenderMan. It uses a TIFF flavor as a base for its mip-mapped textures. Such a TIFF contains a pyramid of layers of the image at different pre-downsampled resolutions and a bunch of custom tags, the renderer interprets when it reads such a file.

However, I can use 'Open As...' in Photoshop and open this as a TIFF. I will simply get the highest resolution layer from the file. That's a simple and battle-proven example of why TIFF is indeed a great answer to the problem.

To provide a better answer than the GP:

.PDF .SVG .DXF/.DWG

All of these are open standards or basically open standards which are already widely implemented and allow the use cases mentioned (vector and raster combinations and layers) and also many of the ones you have thrown in.

Of course the real problem is that they are far too complex for most people's needs so why bother.

People really don't really often need to share the 'layers' of images combined with vector data (usually you use the layers yourself then just share the final product - a flattened JPG or similar), however if they do the above formats are there for them.

.XCF

Not really that is still as good/bad as .PSD is because of the nature of what the file is used for. They are both primarily containers for unfinished works and are designed to hold a lot of detail without so much regard for size and portability. Of course the .XCF format is open but not good enough for a simple viewer or even a web browser. Some file format based on SQLite will probably be more viable as a cross platform image format that is extensible beyond any one software developer limiting it. Kind of like HTML.

It meets all of the requirements of the parent post I replied to, plus it even has a pretty decent open source editor. It's internal structure may not be in SQLite format, but it is an extensible tag based chunk format. You shouldn't dismiss it so easily.

http://xkcd.com/927/

Fun fact: Even though Adobe sits on the TIFF standard for more than 20 years, Photoshop doesn't support layered TIFF images.

Actually, it does: http://cl.ly/image/0j383w2d0t2v

Open this test image if you don't believe me: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/824493/layertest.tif

This one doesn't work with PS, but can be opened with GIMP as two separate images:

https://sites.google.com/site/elsamuko/new.tif

tiffinfo of this image:

http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=85aUFjeS

Came here to say almost exactly this; of course, people being people, TIFF won't be "good enough", where "good enough" is either 1) invented in house (NIH syndrome), or 2) monetizable (TIFF is too open/not proprietary enough).

or if thats not good enough: http://www.openexr.com/

has photoshop plugin aswell. No real support in the gimp though (cinepaint possibly has it though.)

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