As a photography-themed blog, the use of digital compression on images is indigenous to how things are done. We take our pictures, we transfer them off the camera onto the computer, edit in our software of choice, then usually we upload to some internet source to share with colleagues, clients, friends, family, and in the case of this blog - the world. We have been strapped in our choices of image compression though as we could only compress images using the common jpg format, tiff, png, and raw files. What’s missing you ask? The answer is the GIF.
The GIF format has been around for quite a while, and was developed by Unisys literally “back in the day”. Since they were the develoeprs of the compression algorithm, and they held a patent on it, they technically could collect royalties for it’s use, as well as pursue litigation for its illegal use. In fact, at one point Unisys threatened to levy fines of up to $5000 for websites that used the LZW-based algorithm.
When the Unisys patent ended in 2004, most thought the battle was over, but as it turns out, IBM still holds an identical patent to it. Well, photographers, graphic artists, imaging experts and designers can now rejoice as that patent will expire on Oct. 1st and the GIF extension will become part of the public domain. Fun stuff, eh? Just in time too, I think I may need a GIF file to make my millions!
Chucker | 30-Sep-06 at 2:00 pm | Permalink
Help a newbie blogger here…I chose to use .jpg since I started digital photography about 4-5 years ago. As I recall, .jpg gave me files small enough to attach to e-mails and still be impressive when they were received. I think I tried using .gif but it took forever to load.
WHY should I start using .gif? Thanks.
jason | 30-Sep-06 at 3:57 pm | Permalink
You shouldn’t - I guess the post wasn’t written well enough to convey the sentiment - GIF is an outdated and useless technology. I just saw on Slashdot that the patent was expiring and thought (wow…that’s about 20 years too late!).