What is the graphic exchange format?
graphics format (GIF) is a computer file format used for images and simple animation. It was developed by Compuserve® at the end of the 80s and grew in popularity with internet proliferation. GIF is a bitmap format supporting up to 256 colors and a loss of loss of compression that reduces the size of the file without losing image quality. GIF has become a source of controversy in the mid -90s when the company tried to promote a software patent related to the collection of license fees. As technology has evolved, new formats have been created for adding new abilities. Graphic exchange specification was first released in 1987 by Compuserve®, an Internet service provider in the US. Previously, most image formats were limited to black and white and were not optimized for Internet transmission.
GIF was the first image format to be widely supported by web browsers and, despite the introduction of newer formats, remained popular online. GIF format is not for FOTography is particularly suitable because it can only support 256 colors, but can provide both clarity and efficiency for simpler images such as illustrations or logos. The second format revision, GIF89A, promotes transparency. One of the quite unique features of graphic exchange format is to support animation. Multiple GIF images can be stored in one file and played in the order, similar to the role of a film in a film projector.
Images created using graphical exchange format are stored in what is called the image format or bitmap. This means that the format contains information describing the width and height of the image and where the individual pixels belong to this figure. The second type of image format, vector graphics, stores images in a mathematical format that describes how the image should be drawn on the screen. Vector images, unlike bitmaps, can be changed without quality loss, but are much more intensive.
as well as many image formats and graphics fileThe web used are GIF compressed to reduce the size of the file and allow faster transmission over the Internet. Some formats, such as the format of common groups of photographic experts (JPEG), use loss -making compression that reduces the size of the image by reducing image quality. The graphic exchange format uses the form of lossless compression called Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW), named for three men who have developed this technique. LZW compression uses a mathematical algorithm to compress and decompress data in the file, leading to a smaller file size without losing quality.
Using GIF images became controversial when the format was revealed that the software patent owned by the informatechnology company Unisys®. The patent did not apply to the image format itself, only to the compression of the LZW, which GIF used. Unisys® announced at the end of 1994 that it expects those who use the LZW compression, whether for GIF images or other file formatsa license fee. Some web masters feared that the company would try to collect license fees from any website using GIF and format of portable network graphics (PNG) was created as an alternative without patents. PNG images did not become an immediate success that some had hoped for; In 2003, the UNISYS® patent on LZW expired, which means that both formats can now be used freely.