GIF image format used to be really powerful, really handy comprising a number of useful features. But all of a sudden it was announced that the software programs using GIF need to purchase a special license. There was an immediate need for replacing GIF with another image format, and that’s how PNG was developed. When PNG format was designed it was meant to surpass GIF in some if not all of its features. PNG and GIF image formats both support lossless compression methods. Apart from animation PNG combined all the features of the GIF format. GIF is one of the formats used to display indexed-color graphics and images in HTML documents on the web. The maximum number of colors is can display is 256, that’s why GIF is not good for images with a wide range of colors. Simple graphics, logos, drawings are something it is good for. GIF supports transparency, but sometimes the edges of the resulting images are jagged. Unlike GIF, PNG can be 24-bit true color. Its support of transparency is better than the one of GIF and produces images without jagged edges. PNG format supports RGB, indexed color, grayscale, and bitmap images. An image in a lossless PNG file can be 5%-25% more compressed than a GIF file of the same image. The only feature of GIF that is not reflected in PNG is its support of animation. ImageConverter Plus can provide options for all types of
conversion between GIF and PNG image formats. Please note that although PNG seems to be an improved version of GIF, some old versions of IE do not open PNG files, so you may need to keep your images in GIF format.