I have 5.2.9 -- BTW, it's on Linux (Slackware 7) so if you're using Windows or Mac, the libraries aren't gonna be the same, either. Although with a $ as your prompt I'm guessing you're not on a Win or Mac. Tecn says he'll do the update tomorrow night, so I'll see if that works. He's gonna update both the TIFF lib and the IM itself. I'm crossing my fingers. If all else fails, I'll install some other converter and use it to deal with TIFF files only and specifically. That should be rare enough to not have much problems with the extra load of launching a shell utility in the background for a second or two. Some logic like:

if the image format is a tiff
    discard the opened image handle
    write the original blob upload to temp
    run the external converter to make it a JPEG (or perhaps PNG to keep the alpha/matte intact)
    reopen a new image handle from that image

And do that before any size conversion takes place or anything, of course.