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GIF file format
File extension
.gif
File category
Description
GIF – is one of the most popular formats on the World Wide Web, allowing you to share images. It supports various animations, including its transparent views. Such files are used for the development of web advertising with sequentially changing pictures, as well as the graphics shell of video files. They use scan-line images with the depth parameters up to 256 shades of the RGB palette. The process of compressing files in GIF does not affect the quality in any way, as there is no loss. Due to this, it is possible to convert to other formats while preserving the original image properties.
The extension is opened by many applications for viewing and processing images and video content installed on PCs and mobile devices regardless of OS.
Technical details
The format was developed by Compuserve specialists specially for its use in the web environment, which provided wide public access to data on such files. The extension uses the LZW algorithm that allows to carry out a process, in parallel with the removal of segments containing insufficient information. This ensures the preservation of high quality pictures. Thanks to the Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm, the format handles graphic files with repeating sections well, in particular, images with a large number of single-color pixels horizontally. Interlaced data storage is also possible.
Scan-line data is compressed to the smallest size. Reducing the number of colors required to create an image is provided by removing shades unnecessary to perform this process. The range of available GIF colors is from 2 (black and white) to 256, while reducing the number of colors leads to a decrease in the file size.
Programs
Adobe Photoshop
Apple Preview
Corel Paint Shop Pro
Microsoft Windows Photo Gallery Viewer
Developer
CompuServe
MIME type
image/gif