Is TIFF really of higher quality than PNG-24?

Question

I've been doing some research to try to figure out why more people do not store high-resolution image files as PNG-24. PNG has exactly-reversible, lossless compression, it is a net-friendly format so any web browser can view it, and it supports full transparency.

I've seen several people say that TIFF has a "higher quality" than PNG, but no one provides any details on exactly how it is of higher quality. PNG-24 is lossless, so when you "Save As" a TIFF to a PNG, how exactly are you losing quality?

Answer

You explicitly mentioned PNG-24 - that has eight bits per channel, whereas a TIFF file can have 16. That would be one reason the quality could be higher, from a RAW conversion especially but also if you are doing a lot of editing.

The PNG standard also supports 16-bits per channel (PNG-48) but I don't know how many applications support that, whereas pretty much anything that can read TIFF is going to be able to read a 16-bit TIFF file.

TIFF can also store layers in it, which is not a quality issue so much as a flexibility thing. PNG is really meant to hold an image, not a layered set (although APNG can hold a set, it's really not for the same purpose).

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