Minor defensive programming changes for TIFF-based formats (rebased onto dev_4_4)



This is the same as gh-596 but rebased onto dev_4_4.

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See QA 7411-7416, 7418-7421, 7423, 7425, and 7427.  All files are also in ```/ome/data_repo/from_skyking/tiff/julien```.