Animated Gifs

History of Animated GIF

The invention of GIFs started around 1987. It was developed by Steve Willhite and his colleagues at CompuServe. They wanted to create an image file with color that would use less memory than the current methods of file formatting.

Once the World Wide Web came online in 1991, 4 years after the development of GIFs, the very first image to have color on the Internet was a GIF. Steve Willhite and his team were researching a solution to this issue since users could only access their email or transfer files through an hourly company subscription. Restrictions were placed on GIFs to save memory as they can only replicate 256 colors and use a compressing algorithm.

 

 

What is an Animated GIF format?

A GIF or Graphical interchange format is a format of images associated with a series of small images that loop continuously, making a soundless video. They are run without pushing a play button and have an extension of GIF in their filename. In addition, they use LZW compression. There are two versions of GIF: 87a and 89a in this format. 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 in fixed length. A descriptor may specify the existence and size of the color.

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 if the answer is unsuitable or unable to show it. 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 right of the logical screen descriptor. This table mapped the index pixel color data inside the image data. If this table is missing, each image in the GIF file uses the local colors.

Image data is represented with unencoded symbols using the LZW encoded data. 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 found popularity in the early Internet as still images, their first significant boom was animated pictures. On the early Internet, GIFs were a primary way to incorporate “video” into a website by using a GIF to sequence multiple images into an animation. Netscape began supporting the GIF format through their browser 1995 with Netscape Navigator 2.0, including support for looping animations.

This method soon became famous for decorating and adding personality to a website. Many homemade sites became popular using GIFs, and some early viral internet content had GIF usage at its center. Some of this early viral content included the “Hamster Dance” website created in 1998 and the dancing baby GIF ubiquitous with 90’s 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 a website and share, they soon became a typical cultural element among early internet users. As the web matured into the early 2000s, GIFs lost popularity as other more robust tools emerged, like 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 then became a standard when developing on the Internet, and once the early 2000s came, they immediately became 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. Now, it is available to the public. The expiration also allowed smartphones to transfer from flash animations to GIFs since smartphones were easier to process. More users joined content creators with software and programs to create their GIFs. Starting in 2013, communities began realizing the development of a genre of artists due to GIFs becoming more widespread. This led to people creating jobs around this new art format and discovering a new form 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 later 2000s websites like Twitter and Tumblr became sharing spaces for the new era of GIFs, directly adding support to their sites. 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 GIFs with captions embedded, which would eventually become a 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 how people could download someone’s existing GIF and edit it themselves to have 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, proving it had shown its popularity in the modern English language. 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 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 take a 1.5-second recording before and after you take a picture. You can now apply the effect of looping the live image for a rapid and easy GIF, but to format it into a GIF, you need to use the Shortcut app and the Make GIF option.

Androids need to check to see if their phone can accomplish 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 you with the same images or videos. Some applications may need to be purchased, but some options do not need payment. Most free apps will want you to pay only to get rid of ads, but it is not required. You will need a video or photo(s) selected with previous explanations through the GIF creation app. 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 built around helping people make GIFs. Giphy lets you upload the file(s) you want to create into a GIF and will teach you the step-by-step process. Their library of GIFs is also available for public consumption, which contains countless users uploading personal works 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 format of images format,  a new design allowing people to create animated images.

In 1989, CompuServe conceived a developed 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 Web sites. The other is black and white. The feature of storing multiple images in one file, accompanied by control data, is used extensively on the web to produce 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 dozens of available file archiving programs.

While having the right to follow legal action or search for damages against disregarding LZW developers and publishers, Unisys has been very accepting 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 this moment, at least the readers of some publications were theoretically aware of the LZW patent. But there were 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 about using 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 the Unisys licensing policies were proclaimed on January 27, 1995, many software publishers could ship their products again. Others desired to abandon GIF in 1995 and wait for a patent-free evolution of GIF.

More than a few developers invested a lot of time-solving the Unisys patent problem and worked out different modifications to the GIF requirement. One was the project for a “GEF” graphics exchange format. GEF and GIF24 finished into PNG.

 

PNG 

The open architecture of PNG maintains the simplicity of GIF so popular and adds elements such as accurate colors. 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 Netscape added support for GIFs to their browsers. GIFs became more difficult to replace with PNG because PNG was not designed to support animation.

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

 

Future of Animated GIF

Now that we discussed the past, let us see the future for 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 initiated 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 GIFs, which can be copyrighted. 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 around 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.

How to Use Animated GIF

Since we have learned much about GIFs up to this point, some might be curious about what can be done with GIFs. One of the biggest things you can use is a GIF as a form of expression. Remember that GIFs are still artwork and can be created by almost anybody with little time and photos. When someone creates and sends a GIF to someone, they know it is most likely the sender trying to express feelings to the viewer.

For instance, if a GIF of a cartoon character laughing is sent to a friend, that generally shows that the sender is laughing about something the viewer previously sent or did. Another skillful use of GIFs is creating instructions that will continue to repeat. This helps by showing the viewer the steps to complete their task; each step is demonstrated so that very few mistakes can be made. Content creators can also use GIFs to enhance social media and posts so people can only read text. While a few uses are mentioned, there are still limitless uses for GIFs.

Main Use Of GIFs

Memes are used for funny pictures, videos, and other file formats. This is a broad term since it mainly consists of some file someone finds online that evokes emotion. The emotion does differ from person to person since not everyone will enjoy what someone else wants.

A generic example of using this file format will be if one friend is scrolling through the internet and comes upon the comment section. In the comment section, friend one sees a GIF they like, saves it, and then shares the file friend one held with friend two. This is a typical way that GIFs are used in current internet trends.

Improvements

Although it has been a few decades since the development of the GIF, there seems to be little to no changes regarding how GIFs get formatted. It still has 256 colors; 255 are visible, while the last is transparent. GIFs are still a fantastic way of sharing and receiving files over the internet since the file formats the animation by compressing the data. If a GIF allows the data to be compressed, the quality of the image is reduced compared to the original.

There is a way to produce an uncompressed GIF file; if the user wants, they can still convert it into a GIF from a basic image editor. An uncompressed GIF also makes the code faster because it is more straightforward, but the GIF will occupy more space.

Who Can Use Them?

The first thing you should understand about who can use this file format is anyone who can find a way to produce a GIF. Before it was publicly available, there was a patent where whoever wanted to use this file format had to pay. But since the patent expired, it has become publicized. Now, anybody using the search engine to search “GIF” can use GIFs or develop their own.

Most people who use GIFs are users that share or view memes. These are the mass majority since GIFs have become the primary file format for memes because they are non-static and can contain more data while occupying less space on devices.

Problems With Animated GIFs

There are very few problems for people who are okay with using GIFs, but the only dilemma they face is when there are too many GIFs, and the website the user is on slows down. The load time of GIFs will increase and cause the rest of the viewed websites to load slower than expected. On the other side of the spectrum, users who despise GIFs believe that GIFs are obsolete and should be dropped. Also, some people say the .MP4 file format is much better than GIFs and should be replaced.

Overall, GIFs are a great resource for attracting and engaging website visitors. More importantly, effect GIFs can be an excellent add-on for marketing via animation.