Why is GIF limited to 256 colours?

The GIF format was designed in 1987 and uses a palette limited to 256 colours (8 bits per pixel). For photographic content, WebP or JPG will produce better quality at smaller sizes.

When should I use GIF?

GIF is best for simple graphics, logos, and animated images with limited colours. For photos, use JPG or WebP. For transparent images without animation, use PNG.

What does dithering do?

Dithering uses a pattern of differently-coloured pixels to simulate colours that are not in the palette. Floyd-Steinberg is the most effective dithering algorithm - it distributes quantization error to neighbouring pixels.

Why is GIF limited to 256 colours?

The GIF format was designed in 1987 and uses a palette limited to 256 colours (8 bits per pixel). For photographic content, WebP or JPG will produce better quality at smaller sizes.

When should I use GIF?

GIF is best for simple graphics, logos, and animated images with limited colours. For photos, use JPG or WebP. For transparent images without animation, use PNG.

What does dithering do?

Dithering uses a pattern of differently-coloured pixels to simulate colours that are not in the palette. Floyd-Steinberg is the most effective dithering algorithm - it distributes quantization error to neighbouring pixels.

Convert to GIF Online - JPG, PNG, WebP to GIF Free

How to use Convert to GIF

1
Upload your image
Drop a JPG, PNG or WebP image onto the tool or click to select.
2
Set colour depth
GIF supports a maximum of 256 colours. Choose fewer colours (lower bit depth) for a smaller file size at the cost of colour accuracy.
3
Enable dithering
Floyd-Steinberg dithering simulates missing colours using a pattern of dots - great for photographic images with gradients.
4
Download GIF
Click Convert to GIF and download. The output is a standard GIF file compatible with all browsers and social platforms.

What GIF is still good for

GIF remains relevant in specific, well-defined contexts. Messaging platforms - Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, iMessage - support animated GIF as a native media type and many communities share GIFs as short reactions and clips. Static GIF is also sometimes required by older content management systems or email clients that accept images but not modern formats like WebP.

GIF's 256-color limit is a genuine constraint. Photographs converted to GIF show visible color banding and dithering artifacts. The format works best for graphics with flat colors, simple illustrations, logos with limited palettes, and short looping animations where the color restriction is less noticeable. For photographic content, converting to WebP will always produce a better result at smaller file sizes.

Dithering

Dithering blends adjacent pixels of different colors to simulate tones outside the 256-color palette, which can make GIF conversions appear more photographic. However, dithering also increases file size because it introduces more variation for the compression to encode. For flat-color graphics and logos, disabling dithering gives a smaller and sharper result. Once you have your GIF, you can further reduce its size using the GIF compressor to trim the color palette and drop frames.

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