GIF
1987 called: it wants to keep animating.
Where it came from
Steve Wilhite at CompuServe created GIF in 1987 to compress color images over dial-up modems. Version 89a added animation and transparency — features that accidentally made GIF the meme format of the internet.
The Unisys LZW patent controversy in 1994–2004 directly spawned PNG. And yes: the author said it's pronounced 'jif', the internet disagreed, the debate continues.
How it works
GIF stores up to 256 colors per frame using LZW compression — great for logos and pixel art, terrible for photos (dithering banding). Animation is just multiple frames with per-frame timing and optional transparency.
Each frame is typically stored as a delta against the previous one, which is why optimized GIFs are much smaller than naive exports.
Modern alternatives: WebP/AVIF animations are 10–50× smaller at similar quality. UWC converts static GIF frames to PNG/WebP in the browser.
Convert GIF images
Extract or convert GIF frames to PNG/WebP — canvas handles it locally.