diff --git a/skimage/io/_plugins/tifffile_plugin.ini b/skimage/io/_plugins/tifffile_plugin.ini
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..bf83fce2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/skimage/io/_plugins/tifffile_plugin.ini
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+[tifffile]
+description = Load and save TIFF and TIFF-based images using tifffile.py
+provides = imread, imsave
diff --git a/skimage/io/_plugins/tifffile_plugin.py b/skimage/io/_plugins/tifffile_plugin.py
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..58038db4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/skimage/io/_plugins/tifffile_plugin.py
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+try:
+    from tifffile import imread, imsave
+except ImportError:
+    raise ImportError("The tifffile module could not be found.\n"
+        "It can be obtained at "
+        "<http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/code/tifffile.py>\n")