THUMBNAIL(1)

💖 THUMBNAIL(1) 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because this is thumbnail from the LibTIFF crew and it is lowkey doing something iconic 🌸

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✨ NAME ✨

thumbnail — create a TIFF file with thumbnail images 🎀

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

thumbnail [ options ] input.tif output.tif

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so basically, thumbnail is a program that exists to show you how someone might use the SubIFD tag (#330) to store thumbnail images. it's giving demo energy, but make it functional 💅

what it actually does: thumbnail copies a TIFF Class F facsimile file over to the output file, and for each image it creates an 8-bit greyscale "thumbnail sketch" 🦋. the output file holds that thumbnail image, with the associated full-resolution page linked down below it using the SubIFD tag. no cap, that's the whole structure.

by default, thumbnail images are 216 pixels wide by 274 pixels high. and how do those pixels get made? they're calculated by sampling and filtering the input image, with each pixel value passed through a contrast curve ✨

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -w width — specify the width of thumbnail images, in pixels 📏
• -h height — specify the height of thumbnail images, in pixels 📐
• -c contrast — specify a contrast curve to apply when generating the thumbnail images. by default, pixel values get passed through a linear contrast curve that just maps the pixel value ranges. the alternative curves are:
  • exp50 — 50% exponential curve
  • exp60 — 60% exponential curve
  • exp70 — 70% exponential curve
  • exp80 — 80% exponential curve
  • exp90 — 90% exponential curve
  • exp — pure exponential curve
  • linear — linear curve

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💀 BUGS 💀

not me having to report this, but… there are no options to control the format of the saved thumbnail images. that's it. that's the bug. 🙈

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

tiffdump (1), tiffgt (1), tiffinfo (1), libtiff (3tiff),

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

LibTIFF contributors 💜

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🎀 COPYRIGHT 🎀

1988-2025, LibTIFF contributors

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and that's the whole vibe check, bestie — this page is running version 4.7, dated Jun 27, 2026, and it lives under the name THUMBNAIL(1). go forth and thumbnail responsibly 💖✨🦋