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And this is why I object to people calling GIF a lossless compression format without qualifying it. I said at least 3 different times in my post that it was for less than 256 colors but you seem to want to ignore this is a narrow exception these days, since many things have more than 256 colors.
Originally posted by ArMaP
No, you can't recreate the original from the image saved with less colours, regardless of compression.
GIF: Lossless for images
Originally posted by Arbitrageur
www.dictionarist.com...
It seems St Exupery was right after all. (he usually is, btw).
English - Definition of dark side of the moon :
section of the moon that is hidden by the light of the sun
Maybe they meant "from"
Originally posted by Phage
Hidden by the light of the Sun? Say what?
The English language isn't lacking in misnomers, and calling the far side the "dark side" is a good example, since the far side isn't any darker than the near side.
The side of the Moon that faces Earth is called the near side, and the opposite side the far side. The far side is often called the "dark side," but in fact, it is illuminated as often as the near side: once per lunar day, during the new Moon phase we observe on Earth when the near side is dark.
There's no need for "qualifying" it, and I didn't ignored what you said, the problem is that you are calling two different things by the same name.
Originally posted by Arbitrageur
And this is why I object to people calling GIF a lossless compression format without qualifying it.
You don't say what happens if there's more than 256 colors. We've already agreed it's lossless if it has 256 colors or less.
Originally posted by ArMaP
When you apply the compression in GIF, it doesn't matter if it has 256 colours or just one, the compression is always lossless.
Regardless of what is causing the limitation (the "format" or the "compression algorithm") if the original image has more than 256 colors, the GIF file cannot be called "lossless" because you can't recreate the original image from the GIF file.
The fact that GIF files can only have a maximum of 256 colours is a limitation of the format, not of the compression algorithm