Where TIFF came from
Aldus published TIFF in 1986 as a common output format for the desktop scanners then arriving on the market. Its tag-based structure made it endlessly extensible, and that flexibility is why it became — and remains — the standard for print prepress, archival scanning and scientific imaging. TIFF holds 16-bit channels, CMYK separations, ICC profiles and multiple pages, none of which WebP attempts.
The technical picture
Compression: Lossless LZW or ZIP, or entirely uncompressed. Transparency: Full alpha, plus arbitrary extra channels. Animation: Not supported (multi-page, not animated). Colour: 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit per channel, CMYK, ICC profiles. Typical file size relative to WebP: 10-50x larger than WebP.
Where it opens
Universal in professional software; poor in browsers. This is usually the deciding factor when choosing between TIFF and WebP — WebP renders in every browser but is uneven in desktop software, while TIFF has a very different support profile.
Converting TIFF to WebP
TIFF scans routinely run 50-200 MB each, which makes them unusable on the web. Converting to WebP produces a version small enough to actually serve while keeping the image visually intact. Converting WebP to TIFF cannot invent quality: it produces a lossless container around already-lossy pixels, and it cannot restore the 16-bit depth or CMYK separation a true prepress TIFF would carry.
Converting WebP to TIFF
Print bureaus, magazine prepress, photo labs and digital-archive programmes specify TIFF because it is lossless, carries ICC colour and opens in every professional tool. A .webp gets you turned away at the door of all of them. Expect the TIFF output to be 10-50x larger than WebP — that difference is the price of getting a format the destination will actually accept.