<Tr> <Th> Website </Th> <Td> www.w3.org/Graphics/GIF/spec-gif89a.txt </Td> </Tr> <P> The Graphics Interchange Format (better known by its acronym GIF / dʒ ɪf / JIF or / ɡɪf / GHIF) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the bulletin board service (BBS) provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite on June 15, 1987 . It has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability . </P> <P> The format supports up to 8 bits per pixel for each image, allowing a single image to reference its own palette of up to 256 different colors chosen from the 24 - bit RGB color space . It also supports animations and allows a separate palette of up to 256 colors for each frame . These palette limitations make GIF less suitable for reproducing color photographs and other images with color gradients, but it is well - suited for simpler images such as graphics or logos with solid areas of color . </P> <P> GIF images are compressed using the Lempel--Ziv--Welch (LZW) lossless data compression technique to reduce the file size without degrading the visual quality . This compression technique was patented in 1985 . Controversy over the licensing agreement between the software patent holder, Unisys, and CompuServe in 1994 spurred the development of the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) standard . By 2004 all the relevant patents had expired . </P>

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