GIF

• Company: CompuServe
• Description: http://www.onicos.com/staff/iz/formats/gif.html
• Samples: http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/image-samples/GIF/

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is a lossy image compression format. It supports animation and uses a 256 color palette. The PNG format was designed as an alternative to GIF, due to patent concerns about LZW compression.