I thought we did it because back in the day gifs were the most convenient way—and often only way— to post a short video clip on multiple websites. Lazy people would screencap them, not knowing/caring that they were limited to 256 colors (which is why we use dithering for gifs).
this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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I just think they're neat!
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It was an ingenious solution to fake color that didn't exist on a limited palette. If you ever wondered what was the trick for some gifs to have so good colors, they likely used a custom palette, for example in this case it would discard greens and use those places to have more options for browns.
Not sure if GIF has a "default" palette but it does have a global palette per file and each frame can have its own "local" palette. That way each frame can have its own personalized 256 colors and more accurately represent the source material. It bloats the filesize though as one would expect when adding up 256 x 3 (RGB) x NumberOfFrames bytes instead of just 256 x 3 bytes (just for palette data). Filesize can further bloat by using dithering which is effectively adding randomness to each frame and compression generally doesn't do well the more random the data is. End result is a great looking GIF but at this point, why aren't you using a proper video codec? :D
Video codecc didnt really exist when gifs were introduced, and mpeg1 required decoder hardware at the time. Wasnt really until mp4 became standard to retire gifs for good. (Lets just ignore the whole internet Flash phase)
Many media hosts used to only accepted gifs but not videos and some people liked the challenge.
One of the most fascinating After Effects tutorials I’ve ever followed (and of course the technology it’s mimicking) was how to recreate a CRT effect by dissecting three color channels from one another and placing them together close enough to fake the entire palette. It’s just fascinating how much our eyes can extrapolate from illusions.
*witch
This is good stuff