Saving a product photograph as GIF, where palette quantisation turns smooth gradients into visible bands and dither noise.
File formats
GIF
Also called .gif, gif file or animated gif. Here is what it means, when it changes what you export, and what people get wrong.
File formatsRuns on your deviceUpdated 10 August 2026
The short answer
GIF is a 1980s image format best known for short animations. Each frame is limited to 256 colours drawn from a palette, and transparency is a single on-or-off flag rather than a soft alpha channel, so GIF handles flat graphics and simple loops well and photographs badly.
Updated
The short version
GIF at a glance
| Quick fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Specification | GIF89a, published 1989 |
| Colours | Up to 256 per frame, from a palette |
| Compression | LZW, lossless within the palette |
| Transparency | 1-bit, fully opaque or fully transparent |
| Animation | Yes, per-frame delays and looping |
| Best for | Flat graphics, simple short loops |
Slide the table sideways to see every column.
Why is GIF limited to 256 colours?
Because it is an indexed format. Instead of storing a red, green and blue value for every pixel, a GIF stores a colour table and then one index per pixel pointing into it. The index is at most 8 bits wide, which caps the table at 256 entries. Those 256 can be any colours you like, but there are only 256 of them.
Within that constraint the compression is lossless. GIF uses LZW, which finds repeated runs of indices, so large flat areas of one colour compress extremely well. The loss happens earlier, when a full colour image is quantised down to the palette. Encoders soften the result with dithering, scattering pixels of two palette colours to fake a third, which produces the speckled look you see in GIFs of photographs and also makes files larger, because dithered noise defeats LZW.
One nuance: each frame of an animation can carry its own local colour table, so an animated GIF can show more than 256 colours in total. Any single frame still cannot.
Why do transparent GIFs have jagged edges?
Because GIF transparency is 1-bit. One entry in the colour table is flagged as transparent, and every pixel is then either fully visible or fully invisible. There is no in-between value, so a curved or soft edge has to be approximated with a hard staircase.
This causes a second, subtler problem. To make the edge look smooth, editors anti-alias it against an assumed background colour, usually white, and bake those blended pixels into the palette. Put that GIF on a dark page and the blend shows up as a pale halo around the object. PNG and WebP avoid both problems because their alpha channels store 256 levels of opacity per pixel, so the edge blends against whatever is actually behind it.
What should you use instead of GIF?
Almost anything, depending on what you needed GIF for.
- Still graphics with transparency: PNG, which gives full colour and soft alpha edges.
- Animation on the web: animated WebP or APNG, both of which handle full colour and smooth transparency at a fraction of the size.
- Anything longer than a few seconds: a real video file, which is typically an order of magnitude smaller than the equivalent GIF.
For selling platforms, check before you rely on motion. Shopify accepts GIF as product media, animated versions included. Amazon's product image requirements state that animated images are not accepted for product images. Where an animation is not permitted, a still frame or a short video in the platform's own video slot is the working alternative.
What people get wrong about gif
Each one is a real failure mode, not a style preference.
Placing a transparent GIF on a dark background and getting a pale halo baked in from the original anti-aliasing.
Using an animated GIF for a clip of more than a few seconds instead of a video file that would be far smaller.
Assuming an animated GIF will actually animate in a marketplace listing that only accepts still images.
Questions people ask
GIF, answered
The follow-up questions people search for once they have the definition.
Is GIF lossless or lossy?
The LZW compression itself is lossless, but getting to a GIF usually is not. Reducing a full colour image to a 256-entry palette discards colour information permanently. If the source already uses 256 or fewer colours, a GIF of it is a genuinely exact copy.
Does GIF support transparent backgrounds?
Yes, but only as an on-or-off flag on a single palette colour. Pixels are either fully visible or fully hidden, which makes curved edges look stepped. For a clean cut-out with soft edges, use PNG or WebP, both of which store 256 levels of opacity.
Why do my GIFs look speckled or grainy?
That is dithering. When an image has more colours than the palette can hold, the encoder scatters pixels of two available colours to approximate a third. It is most visible in skies, skin tones and studio gradients, and it also makes the file larger.
What is the difference between GIF and APNG?
APNG is animation built on PNG, so it gets full colour and a proper alpha channel instead of 256 palette colours and 1-bit transparency. It became part of the official PNG specification in 2025. GIF still has the wider support in older tools and messaging apps.
Can I use an animated GIF as a product listing image?
Often not. Amazon's product image requirements state that animated images are not accepted for product images, while Shopify does accept animated GIF as product media. Check the platform's published requirements before building a listing around motion.
Same cluster
More from the glossary
Neighbouring entries, so every term in the set is one hop from every other.
Halo (fringing)
A halo is the pale or coloured outline left around a cut-out when traces of the old background cling to the subject's edge.
Ghost mannequin
Ghost mannequin is an apparel photography technique where a garment is shot on a mannequin, then the mannequin is edited out so the clothing appears to hold its own shape.
HDR
HDR means high dynamic range, a wider span between the darkest and brightest parts of an image than standard photography carries.
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Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. Every link opens the specification, standard or documentation the claim was read at.
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