this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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[–] BeefPiano 57 points 1 year ago (1 children)

GIFs have transparency, but not alpha blending so it would have jagged edges. When PNGs were first supported by IE, you had to do some crazy ActiveX scripting calls to make it work.

At the time, Microsoft had shut down the IE team since they had beaten Netscape in the browser wars. If it hadn’t been for Firefox, we would be stuck with that crappy PNG implementation!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

If it weren't for firefox, we'd be stuck with a lot of shit

[–] herrwoland 56 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Today's kids don't understand the struggle of 8 color gifs

[–] grue 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Neither do today's adults, since gifs always allowed up to 256 colors. (The "8" you're probably thinking of was the number of bits per pixel.)

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

256 colors per frame, and not all pixels have to change in each frame.

[–] uis 3 points 1 year ago

MAGIC! Huzzah!

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[–] cosmicrookie 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

GIF doesn't have transparency (Edit: more accurately, ranges of transparency). I thought that was the joke.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You made me understand the joke.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

the only time i think I ever interacted with targa files was with team fortress 2, and probably valve games in general

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've never used tga in my life

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Back in the day I was a graphics professional. A targa file with alpha was the way. I'm old. 😄

[–] FatTony 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They also used targa files in the first Mortal Kombat games.

[–] Cosmicomical 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Downcount 28 points 1 year ago

PNGs: No, you just weren't alpha enough!

[–] mvirts 19 points 1 year ago

G g g gif, the one bit alpha wonder

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I remember Targa. TGA had transparency and the format came around in '84.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

My favourite in simplicity is still xpm (X PixMap) format. You can draw that in your text editor. XFCE's window manager still uses it for borders.

[–] ShortFuse 15 points 1 year ago (5 children)

PNG was built to replace GIF and TIFF.

The Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format was designed to replace the older and simpler GIF format and, to some extent, the much more complex TIFF format.

And it stands to this day, with the exception of animation:

One GIF feature that PNG does not try to reproduce is multiple-image support, especially animations; PNG was and is intended to be a single-image format only.

Though APNG came later, and we even have MP4.

http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngintro.html

Bonus:

No detail was too small for consideration in the authors' quest for a near-perfect image format; yea, verily, even the acronym and pronunciation were major topics of discussion. The reason, of course, is the GIF format; some pronounce it with a soft G like giraffe, some with a hard G like gift, and no one really knows what they're talking about. (For the record, the soft G is correct; it is how the author of the format pronounces it.)

"PNG" is always spelled* "PNG" (or "Portable Network Graphics") and always pronounced "ping" in English, not "pinj" or "pee en gee" or any other multi-syllabic disaster. (For non-English speakers, the three-letter pronunciation is fine, however.)

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If they wanted me to pronounce it ping they should've spelled it ping.

[–] postmateDumbass 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It took too long to relay that.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

Never heard anyone pronounce it ping, lol! P-N-G is a better pronunciation anyway. Less ambiguous, there's already something called ping that is super common in computing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Odd they bring up TIFF. That one is more like a container format that can hold many different types of images.

[–] uis 4 points 1 year ago

Funfact: APNG is now stadardized as part of third edition of PNG spec

[–] thomasloven 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

with the exception of animation.

Funny you should mention that… From the GIF89 specification, Appendix D:

Animation - The Graphics Interchange Format is not intended as a platform for animation, even though it can be done in a limited way.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (6 children)

bring back bmp and tiff formats

[–] RememberTheApollo_ 10 points 1 year ago

Ugh. I was so happy when jpg or gifs came Into common use. bmp and tif files took so long to load.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My scanner defaults to .tiff for some reason if I scan from the button and it cannot be changed. Have to scan from gnome-document-scanner if I want different formats.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

TIFF was invented for scanners and is lossless, out at least less lossy than jpg

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Good to know, didn't realize it was lossless! For me the format I usually need my scans in is pdf, but that is useful info!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Back in the 90s, I was asked to critique a local business web site. I noticed a picture wasn't loading correctly on Netscape Navigator when it was working fine on IE. Turned out, the designer had stuck in a 5MB BMP image. This when a whole lot of people were still on 56K modems.

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[–] uis 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Wasteful. Just use an Amiga IFF file.

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[–] Heavybell 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Anyone else remember when people hated PNG like they hate WEBP today, for the same reason; namely lack of wide-spread software support?

[–] uis 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

JXL is just better than WEBP

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

JpegXL is definitely better overall, especially for its texture-preserving features, but it's even less supported than webp :(

[–] uis 1 points 1 year ago

How about 4096+RGB channels?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

PNG mainly lacked support from Microsoft (Internet Explorer) and Adobe (Photoshop). IE didn't handle PNG transparency, while Photoshop had a shitty PNG implementation that tended to produce files larger than an equivalent GIF. Held back widespread adoption for almost a decade.

[–] Anticorp 12 points 1 year ago

That was the world long after PNG was invented since IE didn't support it for years, and the majority of people and all the businesses used IE.

[–] Cort 10 points 1 year ago

Nah, they just had the interns rotoscoping everything manually

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Back in my day we used BitBlt and we were damn grateful to have it!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] wreckedcarzz 9 points 1 year ago

Everyone: yes

[–] lanolinoil 6 points 1 year ago

Itt: people who missed the joke

[–] AnxiousDater101 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

No, I wasn't blessed. My modeling career is still a work in progress.

[–] nexguy 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And we still can't agree on how to pronounce PNG. The inventer says PNG... case closed degenerates.

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[–] Smoogs 4 points 1 year ago

They should have put superman after the plane. “It’s a bird…it’s a plane…it’s… its” was literally things we said in the 1990s.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

PNG once appeared as likely to succeed as Firefox does now (not very). I can’t believe it finally achieved wide adoption.

But where’d the MNG and APNG go?

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