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Financial Advisor Magazine
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July 2009 issue |
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Formatting Fallacies |
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Choosing between TIFFs or PDFs for business records means understanding their pros and cons.
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By Joel P. Bruckenstein
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When financial advisors get together, it is not surprising to hear them debate the relative merits of one investment vehicle versus another. Understandably, it is less likely that you’d overhear them debating the relative merits of one file format over another; but file formats do matter. We live in a world where digital documents are rapidly overtaking paper ones as the medium of choice, for both everyday business usage as well as regulatory archiving purposes.
The question facing advisors is whether to store their business records in a PDF file format or in a TIFF format. Since advisors are not technology experts, they often rely on the expertise of others, and unfortunately, this sometimes leads them to accept inaccuracies and falsehoods. And in some cases, they’re receiving incorrect or conflicting information about these two file formats.
This article means to set the record straight and help the practitioner make an informed decision about TIFFs and PDFs. First, we’ll provide some basic background on both formats. Then we’ll address some of the most frequently asked questions about choosing between them.
What Is TIFF?
The Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) specification was originally introduced in 1986 by Aldus Corporation. Microsoft, as well as leading scanner and printer manufacturers, cooperated on a subsequent version of the specification in 1988. The most current specification dates back to 1992, and Aldus Corporation merged with Adobe in 1994.
TIFF is a high-density, high-quality file format for storing images. The format uses compression algorithms to minimize the document storage requirements. TIFF is widely supported by scanning, faxing, optical character recognition and image manipulation programs. Many operating systems, including Microsoft XP and Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard have built-in TIFF viewing capabilities, so TIFF files can be viewed in these systems without any additional software.
What Is PDF?
The Portable Document Format standard was originally introduced by Adobe Systems in 1993. PDF lets you capture and view information from almost any application, on any computer system, and share it with virtually anyone, anywhere. PDF files are viewable and printable on all major platforms including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac, UNIX and most major mobile platforms.
Usually, a free PDF reader like Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader must be installed on a computer to read PDF files. Most personal computers come with Adobe Reader pre-installed, and for those that don’t, this is a one-time operation that only takes a minute.
Like TIFF, PDF is capable of capturing very high quality images for publishing applications and other programs. Like TIFF, the PDF standard uses compression to store images in a file. But unlike TIFF, the PDF standard explicitly defines the compression algorithms that may be used.
Frequently Asked Questions
I’ve heard that TIFFs are preferable to PDFs because a TIFF is an open format and PDF is proprietary. Is this true?
No. Despite persistent rumors that have been uttered at industry trade shows, it is absolutely false! According to Betsy Fanning of the Institute for Information and Image Management (AIIM), the PDF is an open standard. Kevin Day of Trumpet Inc., a provider of document management solutions for financial professionals, is even more emphatic: “I don’t understand how this misinformation can continue to be given credence. PDF is accessible as an ISO International Standard—ISO 32000-1. Anyone with a Web browser can run a Google search to confirm this.
“Our applications make heavy use of both TIFF and PDF,” he continues, “and I can assure you: There are no licensing fees associated with either format. Period!”
A salesperson told me that the U.S. government and its agencies prefer TIFF to PDF. Is that true?
No, that statement is false. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the nation’s official record keeper, responsible for storing not only business records from all branches of government and agencies like the SEC, but also rare documents such as original copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, is perhaps the best arbiter of the government’s position on these two file formats, and it accepts both. Michael Carlson, the director of Electronic and Special Media at the Record Services Division at NARA, says both TIFF and PDF formats are equally acceptable to the administration, though he concedes that PDFs might be preferable to users in certain instances.
“There really isn’t anything better for rendering a document the way it was created,” says Carlson.
Alan Gilmore, a securities attorney with Lynch, Osborne, Theivakumar & Gilmore LLC, says, “The SEC is equally comfortable with the TIFF and PDF formats. There is absolutely nothing in SEC regulations or any interpretive guidance to suggest that the SEC favors one format over the other.”
Which is more secure, TIFF or PDF?
While one could make the argument that neither format is 100% secure, the PDF format clearly has the advantage.
“TIFF files do not have any native security capabilities,” says Larry Kovnat, a product security manager at Xerox. “PDF files do offer native security options.”
Kevin Day concurs. “No part of the TIFF specification addresses security,” Day says. The ISO PDF standard, by contrast, addresses both security and digital signatures. This means that when users need to secure a PDF file, they can use features of the PDF format itself to do so. You can use passwords and encryption on PDF files to restrict users from opening, printing and editing them.
Those who own a recent full version of Adobe Acrobat can create special PDF files called security envelopes, in which you can embed multiple documents. These envelopes are encrypted PDF files with attachments. This method allows you to transfer multiple documents without encrypting and password protecting each one individually. When the recipients open the envelope, they can extract the file attachments and save them to disk. The saved files are identical to the original file attachments and are no longer encrypted when saved.
We need to re-emphasize that neither format is inherently secure, but only the PDF format offers features that allow the user to password protect, encrypt and/or digitally sign files when necessary (for instance, when the user is transmitting files containing sensitive information via e-mail or on a CD). Not one expert I spoke with could suggest any circumstances when TIFF files are more secure than PDFs.
What about sustainability?
Some have suggested that TIFFs are preferable to PDFs because they were in use earlier and will continue to be used after PDF is gone. Again, this argument has no basis in fact. According to Carlson, the National Archives has no position on the sustainability of either format, though he expects both to be around for a very long time. The fact that the PDF specification is still being actively developed—and is part of the ISO standards body—indicates that it is here to stay and will remain “backward compatible” to communicate with older devices and standards.
At the same time, there has been no major revision of the TIFF specification since 1992. Furthermore, the TIFF specification does not explicitly define which compression algorithms are allowed, so some TIFF viewing applications might not properly read all TIFF files. For the long-term storage of their images, TIFF users are well advised to ensure that their files use only widely supported compression algorithms. This is especially true for the compression used for gray scale and color images.
Because the PDF standard explicitly defines the allowed compression algorithms, all PDF viewers are capable of reading PDFs generated to a particular version of the standard.
Is it true that the TIFF format can offer smaller files than the PDF format?
Not necessarily. File size depends on a number of factors. In its uncompressed format, TIFF tends to result in very large files. A single page of a scanned black and white text document might compress a bit better in TIFF, depending on the compression algorithm being used, says Xerox’s Kovnat, but in many other circumstances, the PDF format will give you a more compact file.
Day says that the whole file size argument is silly. “In some instances, PDF may produce a slightly larger file,” he says, “but that’s because PDF files are more robust, so they contain more information.” He adds that rendered PDF files (for example, a Microsoft Word document converted directly into a PDF file) give you much, much smaller files that are superior in resolution to any scanned TIFF image.
What else do I need to know?
Kovnat says part of the reason we default to PDF is because of its portability. That was the PDF standard’s mission, and it continues to perform well. Portability, he says, was not the TIFF’s mission. Kovnat also points out that dealing with multipage documents can be clumsy in TIFF. The PDF format is much more flexible when dealing with larger, more complex documents, he says.
A Document Management System Is Essential
Broadly speaking, there are two types of documents that advisors need to concern themselves with: internal firm documents, such as business records, and documents distributed to others. For internal documents, the best solution is to use a quality document management system (DMS). Such a system can control who views, edits, copies or prints a file. It ensures the integrity of a document, and it provides a full audit trail. These systems can also allow sophisticated searches. Some, like the system offered by iNautix, write directly to an unalterable medium to further protect against document manipulations and alteration.
Among those providers offering DMS to advisors are Cabinet NG, CEO Image Systems, Docupace Technologies, iNautix, Laserfiche, NetDocuments, Redtail, Worldox and Xerox. When documents are stored in a document management system, the system itself provides the security, so in such an environment, the question of better security features between TIFFs and PDFs are not meaningful. However, when you need to e-mail a file to a client, the superior security options PDF provides are important.
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CONFERENCES
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