File with .TFW extension contains text file with information about the location, scale, and rotation of a map stored as a separate TIFF image. Data is written in the form of sequence of six lines that specify the coordinates for the top-left corner of the world map image, image size and rotational information if present.

TFW file fomat is similar to JPW file which contains information about location, rotation and scale of map file in JPEG format. TFW files do not include image files and are usually accompanied by relevant TIFF files. These files are commonly used to save location data (georeference data in GIS format) for satellite images.