diff --git a/skimage/io/_plugins/pil_plugin.py b/skimage/io/_plugins/pil_plugin.py
index 8d3bd977..bdffc0fd 100644
--- a/skimage/io/_plugins/pil_plugin.py
+++ b/skimage/io/_plugins/pil_plugin.py
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ from six import string_types
 from PIL import Image
 
 from ...util import img_as_ubyte, img_as_uint
-from ...external.tifffile import imread as tif_imread, imsave as tif_imsave
+from ...external.tifffile import TiffFile, imsave as tif_imsave
 
 
 def imread(fname, dtype=None, img_num=None, **kwargs):
@@ -42,7 +42,8 @@ def imread(fname, dtype=None, img_num=None, **kwargs):
         kwargs.setdefault('key', img_num)
         if fname.lower().endswith(('.tiff', '.tif')):
             with open(fname, 'rb') as f:
-                return tif_imread(f, **kwargs)
+                tif = TiffFile(f)
+                return tif.asarray(**kwargs)
 
     if isinstance(fname, string_types):
         with open(fname, 'rb') as f: