GIF

The Graphics Interchange Format, or GIF, is a bitmap image format developed by CompuServe and released on June 15, 1987, led by computer scientist Steve Wilhite. It was created to provide color images for CompuServe's file downloading services, replacing an earlier black and white encoding scheme. GIF compresses images without loss of quality using Lempel-Ziv-Welch compression, supports up to 256 colors per image and can store several images in a single file, a feature that lets it hold simple animations. Though newer formats have replaced it for ordinary photographs, GIF remains the standard format for small looping animations and has had a cultural second life as the format behind reaction GIFs shared on social media.