GeoTIFF file format

GeoTIFF represents an effort by over 160 different remote sensing, GIS, cartographic, and surveying related companies and organizations to establish a TIFF based interchange format for georeferenced raster imagery.

"GeoTIFF" refers to TIFF files that have geographic (or cartographic) data embedded as tags within the TIFF file. The geographic data can then be used to position the image in the correct location and geometry on the screen of a geographic information display.

GeoTIFF is a metadata format, which provides geographic information to associate with the image data. But the TIFF file structure allows both the metadata and the image data to be encoded into the same file.

A GeoTIFF file can be imported into any software that also can read a standard TIFF file. If the software is written to take advantage of the extra geographical information in the GeoTIFF file, then the image should be properly registered with other datasets you may have available. See your particular software documentation for further details on how it handles GeoTIFF files.

For more information on GeoTIFF, see the GeoTIFF web page, which is the source for some of the above info.