Because it is, so what? GIF format has no obligation to be animated, and for a simple monochrome image like this, it’s not terribly bad at image compression.
Because it makes me nervous that if I download and share this then it’s going to have one frame of ahego or Obama as an NFT ape, or something equally horrible.
Nah I have an offline, low permissions, addon for converting webp and other formats and downloading them, so I just used that. But I did have to crop the image afterwards. Still beats losing resolution.
I am having a hard time converting this to a JPG that is smaller than the GIF. Like you say, I think the fact that it is a static black-and-white image plays into the strengths of the GIF format and sidesteps the problems people usually experience with animated GIFs. The biggest downsides of the GIF format are a large file size for animated images and the fact that it only supports limited colors.
I do prefer PNG over GIF though for static lossless images, but that could have just as well been stored as a GIF if I wanted. The GIF format indeed is limited to a max of 256 colors though (either 256, or 255 + transparency anyways).
Why is this a gif?
For all its faults, GIF is a widely supported format. And its biggest fault (file size) mainly applies to animations, not static images like this.
All that said, sure, this image would probably be more efficient as a JPG.
Because it is, so what? GIF format has no obligation to be animated, and for a simple monochrome image like this, it’s not terribly bad at image compression.
Because it makes me nervous that if I download and share this then it’s going to have one frame of ahego or Obama as an NFT ape, or something equally horrible.
Then screen shot a still image of it, save the screen shot.
Nah I have an offline, low permissions, addon for converting webp and other formats and downloading them, so I just used that. But I did have to crop the image afterwards. Still beats losing resolution.
I am having a hard time converting this to a JPG that is smaller than the GIF. Like you say, I think the fact that it is a static black-and-white image plays into the strengths of the GIF format and sidesteps the problems people usually experience with animated GIFs. The biggest downsides of the GIF format are a large file size for animated images and the fact that it only supports limited colors.
Hahaha, I actually have a bit of fun sometimes with limited color palettes, this one is rendered in only 16 colors…
https://lemmy.world/post/44408844
I do prefer PNG over GIF though for static lossless images, but that could have just as well been stored as a GIF if I wanted. The GIF format indeed is limited to a max of 256 colors though (either 256, or 255 + transparency anyways).