Legacy/Fax TIF Will Not Open In Preview

I am reopening this question asked previously for clarity and closure for those who are struggling with opening legacy TIFF files on the Mac platform:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2289031

Facts

1. The preview application will not open a legacy TIFF from a fax machine, regardless of Mac OS X version

2. Attempting using several different programs to open the legacy TIFF

2.1 ImageMagick [www.imagemagick.org] was used and generated error "Depreciated and troublesome old-style JPEG compression mode, please convert to new-style JPEG compression and notify vendor of writing software"

2.2 Adobe Photoshop was unable to open the TIFF file. Generated error "unsupported tif format or TIFF file uses an unsupported compression method."

2.3 On Linux, tried using Evince & imview. Neither worked.

Research [for those technically inclinded]

RFC 2301 describes the file format needed for Internet Fax (https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2301.txt)

Wikipedia has a helpful article for TIFF format (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIFF)

TiffTags Utility & Background (http://research.stowers.org/mcm/efg/ScientificSoftware/Utility/TiffTags/index.ht m)

TIFF File Format: https://www.awaresystems.be/imaging/tiff.html

Analysis

TIFF is advertised as a standard but the implementations of TIFF readers and writers vary widely - not even Adobe Photoshop can open all TIFF files. This is particularly true if the TIFF was generated by Internet fax.

Programs that advertise as being able to open TIFF files may not be able to open Internet Fax TIFF file formats for the reasons described above.

Resolution

One may take a legacy TIF file generated by fax and send that TIF file through an Internet fax application. There are several available but I resolved my issue using eFax (www.efax.com). I attached the TIF within eFax (runs in a browser) and sent the fax to myself. eFax emailed me a PDF that was readable in Preview (and just about any other decent reader).

Although your resolution may vary, you will need an Internet fax provider that understands the TIF fax format and will convert to PDF when you try to send it to yourself. What will also work is finding some legacy or back-ported fax application that can do the same, but this resolution allowed me to solve my problem in 5-10 minutes without messing with different operating systems or binary application locally on my system.

Open to other suggestions (i.e. perhaps Apple can take a look at this and build this support into Preview? Perhaps I should post in another group?)

JDMSR