Why did Zoomify create the PFF format?
Zoomify makes high-quality images fast and interactive over the web – regardless of image size. Zoomify customers commonly make use of images hundreds of megabytes or even gigabytes in size. Popular formats such as TIFF are limited to 4 gigabytes of image data due to the way in which their data offset information is stored. Other formats such as JPEG2000 provide opportunities for storage of larger files but have not enjoyed widespread adoption or broad support in popular imaging software. Zoomify’s Pyramidal File Format (PFF) is designed to allow lightweight, single-file storage of the JPEG-compressed image ’tiles’ that make up multi-resolution zoomable image content. The PFF format’s technical file size limit is expected to match or exceed that of operating systems and related technologies. Zoomify also offers ‘folder-based’ zoomable image storage, in which image tiles are stored as JPEG files within a folder. For more information on folder-based and PFF storage alternatives, see the
