Animated Gifs

What is an Animated GIF format?

A GIF, or Graphical Interchange Format, is a format for images that consists of a series of small images that loop continuously, making a silent video. They are run without pressing a play button and have a GIF extension in their filename. In addition, they use LZW compression. There are two versions of the GIF format: 87a and 89a. A GIF file is characterized by a header, logical screen descriptor, Global color table, image data, and trailer—the characteristics of the blocks and pixel dimension are fixed length. A descriptor may specify the color’s existence and size.

The header is used to specify the type of GIF file. It has the same structure as the logical screen descriptor. All the files use the character GIF as an identifier in the first three bytes and the version of the GIF in three bytes. This means that the header contains 6 bytes.

Scaling the screen is needed when the answer is unsuitable or cannot be shown. A logical screen descriptor specifies the screen and color information. The height and width enclose the smallest value of screen resolution.

The global color table is placed to the right of the logical screen descriptor. This table mapped the index pixel color data within the image. If this table is missing, each image in the GIF file uses the local colors.

Image data is represented with unencoded symbols using LZW encoding. The trailer represents the last byte of the file. It is always in the 3Bh value, meaning the end of streaming data.

Early Uses of GIF

While GIFs first gained popularity on the early Internet as still images, their first significant boom came with the advent of animated GIFs. On the early Internet, GIFs were a primary way to incorporate “video” into a website by sequencing multiple images into an animation. Netscape began supporting the GIF format through their browser in 1995 with Netscape Navigator 2.0, including support for looping animations.

This method soon became famous for adding personality and decoration to a website. Many homemade sites became popular for using GIFs, and some early viral internet content centered on GIFs. Some of this early viral content included the “Hamster Dance” website, created in 1998, and the dancing baby GIF ubiquitous on the 90s Internet.

Under Construction GIF

The “under construction” GIF was a popular 90’s GIF acting as a placeholder for unfinished website content.

Because GIFs were easy to incorporate into websites and share, they soon became a common cultural element among early internet users. As the web matured in the early 2000s, GIFs lost popularity as other, more robust tools emerged, such as Flash animation, JavaScript, and video.

However, they remained relevant as GIF support had been built into all major web browsers, while there was a standard for video within HTML. Soon, however, the file format would find new meaning on the web as a more powerful tool.

The 2000s to the Present

GIFs became a standard for developing on the Internet, and by the early 2000s, they were even more widely used. It was a way for people to express themselves with only a few seconds of animated photos, and eventually became a way to create memes.

By 2004, the existing patents for licensing GIFs finally expired. It is now available to the public. The expiration also enabled smartphones to transition from flash animations to GIFs, as smartphones were easier to process. More users joined content creators with software and programs to create their GIFs. Starting in 2013, communities began to recognize the emergence of a genre of artists as GIFs became more widespread. This led people to create jobs around this new art format and discover a new source of income.

Social Media Explosion

The widespread adoption of social media is responsible for GIF’s second boom. The GIF resurged as websites like Myspace and other early social media platforms took off. Again, it became a popular tool for decorating a personal space or adding animation to your page. Animated images were viral in the Myspace page era, as users were encouraged to decorate their home pages by working directly with the site’s HTML.

Popular late-2000s websites like Twitter and Tumblr became sharing spaces for the new era of GIFs, directly adding support for them. They would prove especially useful as a shorthand communication on Twitter, which famously limited posts to 140 characters. The file size limit on Tumblr forced users to become creative with what they shared. Rather than video, they chose embedded-captioned GIFs, which would eventually become the new standard for GIFs.

GIF Emoticons

This would evolve the format into its current use as a popular form of communication: the GIF reaction. Reaction GIFs are animated images used instead of text to communicate an emotion or response, similar to other internet slang like LOL or emoticons. Communities on Reddit or Tumblr have formed around sharing GIFs and popularizing them.

The ease of sharing, creating, and editing others’ GIF creations helped cement the format as a popular way to express creativity. A significant element of GIF sharing was that people could download someone else’s GIF and edit it to convey new meanings. This image remixing is still popular today, with reaction GIFs often repurposed to be relevant to whatever topic is trending on the web.

In 2012, the GIF entered the Oxford English Dictionary, demonstrating its popularity in modern English. The American Oxford publishers voted it Word of the Year in the same year, calling it “a tool with serious applications, including research and journalism.”

How to Make an Animated GIF On Phones

Creating a GIF is relatively easy and requires very little expert knowledge. Now that we learned about GIFs and their history, let us know how they make these on an iPhone or Android. To format a GIF on an iPhone, take a photo of your target with Live Photo mode. This will record for 1.5 seconds before and after you take a picture. You can now apply the looping effect to the live image to create a rapid, easy GIF, but to format it as a GIF, you need to use the Shortcut app and the Make GIF option.

Androids need to check whether their phones can perform this procedure. Specific Androids can use the GIF-creation software in the free Gallery app. With Google Photos, you can choose and use several pictures to make an animation.

Make GIFs With Apps

Infuriatingly, an Apple or Android smartphone sometimes causes complications or decides not to work correctly. Fret not. If any of these issues occur, users will be delighted that certain apps can create GIFs for them with the same images or videos. Some applications may need to be purchased, but some options do not need payment. Most free apps will ask you to pay only to remove ads, but you don’t have to. You will need to select a video or photo(s) using the GIF creation app, as explained previously. After selecting, the app will process the file(s) and produce a GIF.

How to make Animated GIFs on Computers

There are online resources explicitly designed to help people make GIFs. Giphy lets you upload the file(s) you want to turn into a GIF and will walk you through the step-by-step process. Their library of GIFs is also available for public consumption, which contains countless GIFs uploaded by users to share with others or show off.

Lastly, users can create GIFs on websites or through software like Adobe Animate. If the content creator is skilled enough, they can develop their GIF(s) with editing software on their personal computers. Regardless of how a user creates a GIF, it should still produce the developer’s actions.

Creation of the 87a format:

On June 15, 1987, Trevor and his team invented a new image format and a new design that allow people to create animated images.

In 1989, CompuServe developed a version called 89a that added support for animation delays (multiple images in a stream were already supported in 87a), transparent background colors, and storage of application-specific metadata. The two versions can be recognized by looking at the first six bytes of the file (the” signature”), which, when interpreted as ASCII, read” GIF87a” and” GIF89a”, respectively. Also, the 89a arrangement supports combining text labels as text, but this feature is not widely used because there is little control over display fonts.

GIF was one of the first two image formats used on websites. The other is black and white. The feature of storing multiple images in a single file, along with control data, is widely used on the web to create simple animations.

LZW protocol

The technique used to compress the image data is called LZW (after Lempel-Ziv-Welch) and was first explained by Terry A. Welch in June 1984. The LZW procedure was simple and very well described, and it soon became a prevalent technique for data compression. GIF is not only in the use of LZW. The TIFF file specification includes LZW compression and support for dozens of file archiving programs.

While having the right to pursue legal action or seek damages for disregarding LZW developers and publishers, Unisys has been very accommodating and fair. It is likely that the success of LZW and its implementations, especially among small developers, caught Unisys unprepared.

The original licensing agreement text, which had upset many developers, was immediately followed by clarifications.

GIF and its fame

After the launch of the first web browser in 1991, GIF became famous. Many websites used this format to make their sites animated. Due to the slow connexon of 56kbs, GIF files were the best choice for the website’s animation. They were used to flash “Under Construction” and spin email icons.

The original article on LZW was issued in 1984, while the LZW patent was first declared in the press in 1989. Unisys said at least one reason it started to learn of the widespread use of LZW in developing this standard.

An article on “LZW Data Compression” was issued in the October 1989 issue of Dr. Dobb’s Journal. A reader replied in the December issue, explaining that the algorithm was patented. The article’s writer added that he was ignorant of any patent on the algorithm. More readers wrote, and in the March 1990 subject, the editor-in-chief dedicated his Editorial to this topic, which, in his words, “sparked a forest of fires.” The same issue also included an approved statement by Unisys Corporation, which proved that LZW was patented, stated the modem industry, and showed how developers could contact Unisys.

At the time, at least readers of some publications were theoretically aware of the LZW patent. But there were a few links to GIFs. Unisys didn’t know about GIF, nor did most developers know that GIF contained LZW technology.

Licensing

Until 1994, discussions on CompuServe’s Report Service demonstrated no explicit mention of Unisys’s obligation to get a license to use LZW in GIF software. This was restricted to private verbal discussions. Other developers have directly informed the Unisys licensing department that they used LZW in GIF between 1988 and 1989. Still, it is unknown whether Unisys ever recognized these actions in writing.

Different opinions have been stated on this. Between 1993 and 1994, most developers didn’t know that GIF employed a patented algorithm, although both Unisys and CompuServe knew this. When Unisys’ licensing policies were announced on January 27, 1995, many software publishers could resume shipping their products. Others desired to abandon GIF in 1995 and wait for a patent-free evolution of GIF.

More than a few developers invested significant time in addressing the Unisys patent issue and developed various modifications to the GIF specification. One was the project for a “GEF” graphics exchange format. GEF and GIF24 were converted into PNG.

PNG

The open architecture of PNG maintains the simplicity of GIF, which is popular, and adds features such as accurate color reproduction. Authentic color images are better than any other widely used image format on the web. It is also more effective than GIF in storing palette-based images.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) officially approved the PNG specification as a “W3C Recommendation.” Most web graphic packages now support PNG. The popularity of GIFs received an unexpected boost when Microsoft and Netscape added support for GIFs to their browsers. GIFs became more difficult to replace with PNGs because PNGs were not designed to support animation.

The developers of PNG are completing a new feature called MNG. It appears however

Future of Animated GIF

Now that we discussed the past, let us look to the future of GIFs. While the past may have given GIFs a great push-off point in becoming popularized and everyday use on the Internet, it seems to be ending. Companies and brands hoping to advertise with GIFs began creating their GIFs. These companies believed they could use GIFs instead of videos and still images to market themselves.

Along with advertisements, there may be issues with allowing anyone to create copyrighted GIFs. Little can be done to stop an artist, or even enthusiasts with free time, from copying some copyrighted products and producing a GIF. There is no indication of the future of GIFs, so we need to wait and see.

The business of GIFs is booming. Many websites have been created for creating and sharing GIF images. Companies like Gfycat receive millions of dollars in startup funding. As of 2019, the popular GIF-sharing site Giphy had roughly 700 million daily users.

The GIF has proved to be a popular tool for sharing content online. While the GIF remains popular as a communication tool, some internet artists view the file format as a canvas. These artistic GIFs are popular on sites like Tumblr or Reddit, with large communities formed around sharing and advancing their animation craft.