Pictures speak more than words and it holds extremely true for animated GIFs. That is why GIFs are gaining wide acceptance recently. You can find animated GIFs everywhere on the internet. You can get different types of GIFs from social media pages, image sites, and websites.
GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format, which is a file that includes a graphic bitmap image with movements. GIF images’ bitmap format was developed by a software writer in the United States called Steve Wilhite. It was in 1987 that he found GIF images. They are mostly found on pictures, icons, banners, and websites.
The length of a GIF falls between 10-15 seconds. GIFs can be made from still images too, showing a few sequences and later stopping. GIFs are not similar to JPEG format as the quality of images is not degraded. GIFs utilize lossless compression, including colors to the maximum number of 256. Even though only 256 colors are used in animated GIFs, many people widely use them. But it is not an ideal format to store digital photos.
Why Are GIFs Popular?
People relied on still pictures before the popularity of GIFs. Videos were the only option to see movement or animation in images. But videos were bigger and took more time for sharing. If a person wants to see a certain portion of the video, they have to wait till that part arrives or have to skip to the particular part. Buffering of the video creates problems for people with low internet speed or data. The popularity of GIfs arose with the widespread epic fall videos ruling the internet.
Several users took the weirdest, funniest, or most embarrassing part of a video and converted it to 10-15 seconds GIFs or mini clips. It became widely accepted and you could see funny, interesting, and crazy animated GIFs everywhere on the web. As they do not require much space, it was easy to store and share them. The ease of sharing a GIF made it sensational in the world of the internet. Millions of animated GIFs are now available on the internet and some of them have made common unknown people celebrities over a night. GIFs of celebrities, athletes, and popular figures from TV shows or movie clips are also common.
Creating GIFs
Animated GIFs are very easy to create, which is one of the reasons that add to their rising popularity. Earlier, people had to rely on sophisticated programs or software to create such video clips. Some of them used photo editing platforms like Photoshop to edit and create GIFs. Nowadays, several websites and apps are available that let you create animated GIFs easily and quickly.
Fast-speed internet, the rise in messaging apps, and the increase in meme culture are other reasons that add to the popularity of GIFs. Most of the consumers of GIFs are younger generations who use GIFs in their everyday communication. This trend is made use of by popular brands to attract more young customers.