Difference between revisions of "GIF"

GIF, which stands for Graphic Interchange Format was developed by the now defunct Compuserve ISP. GIF is an 8-bit-per-pixel bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability.

The format uses a palette of up to 256 distinct colors from the 24-bit RGB color space. It also supports animations and allows a separate palette of 256 colors for each frame. The color limitation makes the GIF format unsuitable for reproducing color photographs and other images with continuous color, but it is well-suited for more simple images such as graphics or logos with solid areas of color.

This format is based off of the LZW compression, which removes redundant information from a bitmap and limits the amount of colors used. In other words, instead of defining each pixel’s color, like in the BMP format, GIFs will define one color for several pixels. It will also reduce the number of colors (color palette) saved in the file to only 256 colors or less instead of the normal millions of colors in a BMP. GIFs also have the ability to have transparent backgrounds and animation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF

This article is a stub. If you have information to help make this page more accurate, please contact us. If you would like content on this page removed from our database, please contact us. To link to this page from your web site, blog, social networking site, Twitter feed or e-mail message, use the byline "From David Spencer's Media Spin <http://media.davidspencer.ca>."

Difference between revisions of "GIF"

Latest revision as of 12:04, 21 June 2007

Navigation menu

Personal tools

Namespaces

Variants

Views

Actions

Search

Navigation

Editing Site Content

Tools

@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
-GIF, which stands for Graphic Interchange Format was developed by the now defunct Compuserve ISP. This format is based off of the LZW compression, which removes redundant information from a bitmap and limits the amount of colors used. In other words, instead of defining each pixel’s color, like in the BMP format, GIFs will define one color for several pixels. It will also reduce the number of colors (color palette) saved in the file to only 256 colors or less instead of the normal millions of colors in a BMP. GIFs also have the ability to have transparent backgrounds and animation.
+''GIF'', which stands for [[Graphic Interchange Format]] was developed by the now defunct Compuserve ISP. GIF is an 8-bit-per-pixel bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability.
+The format uses a palette of up to 256 distinct colors from the 24-bit RGB color space. It also supports animations and allows a separate palette of 256 colors for each frame. The color limitation makes the GIF format unsuitable for reproducing color photographs and other images with continuous color, but it is well-suited for more simple images such as graphics or logos with solid areas of color.
+This format is based off of the LZW compression, which removes redundant information from a bitmap and limits the amount of colors used. In other words, instead of defining each pixel’s color, like in the BMP format, GIFs will define one color for several pixels. It will also reduce the number of colors (color palette) saved in the file to only 256 colors or less instead of the normal millions of colors in a BMP. GIFs also have the ability to have transparent backgrounds and animation.
+http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF