The imaging settings allow you to customize what happens if you load an .FCS file that has an associated Compact Waveform file (.CVW), but no extracted .TIFF files. The default is to have FlowJo automatically extract the .TIFF files from the .CVW. Its a one-time occurrence if you keep the .TIFF files.
Note: For files with a lot of images this process can take some time.
Figure 1 Imaging preferences