Nope. This is in fact why TIFF is pretty much dead. The format is very extensible. It was originally specified to have 5 ways to encode data: uncompressed, LZW

Nope. This is in fact why TIFF is pretty much dead. The format is very extensible. It was originally specified to have 5 ways to encode data: uncompressed, LZW, fax, RLE, and JPEG. The use of proprietary encodings is normal however, along with several non-proprietary encodings. Data can be lossless or not. Data can be bitmap or vector. There are even two different ways to store JPEG data, with many tools supporting only the original style and many other tools only supporting the newer style. Now consider trying to view a TIFF that you have received. You have a several TIFF-capable image viewers. No two of them handle the same set of encodings. The most recently installed viewer is associated with the file extension, and as a normal user you are thus unable to use the other viewers. If you install another TIFF-capable viewer, you gain the ability to view some TIFF images while losing the ability to view some other images. PNG just works. JFIF and EXIF JPEG do too, because nobody creates 12-bit or arithmetic-encoded files. GIF just works.