The 256-Colour Palette Limit
GIF stores colour using an indexed palette of up to 256 colours. A typical photograph contains hundreds of thousands of unique colours, so the converter must map each pixel to the nearest palette entry. For photographic content this produces a visible posterisation effect- Smooth gradients become banded.
Dithering
jpg.now applies Floyd-Steinberg dithering when converting photos to GIF. Dithering simulates missing colours by mixing available palette colours at the pixel level, which significantly reduces banding at the cost of a slightly noisy appearance. It is the best strategy for photographic GIFs but cannot fully compensate for the palette limitation.
Animated GIF from Multiple JPGs
Uploading multiple JPG files to the GIF converter creates an animated GIF where each JPG becomes one frame. You can set the frame delay (in milliseconds) and choose whether the animation loops. Note that each frame shares a single 256-colour palette for the whole animation (global palette), or can use per-frame palettes for better colour accuracy at the cost of larger file size.
When GIF Is Still Useful
- Short looping animations shared on platforms that strip video or don't support WebP
- Simple graphics with few colours -diagrams, pixel art, and logos convert cleanly to GIF
- Universal compatibility - GIF is supported by every browser and image viewer since the early 1990s
For static photos where quality matters, PNG or WebP are far better choices. For animated content on modern platforms, WebP animation or short MP4 video produce dramatically smaller files.