GIF and ICO file types are legacy formats still cherished and widely adopted in graphic design and web development. Users should understand the strengths and limitations of each format to choose the best one for a particular situation.
The article highlights and discusses ICO vs. GIF regarding their file size, image quality, structure, compression technique, storage needs, browser support, web performance, animation, and transparency support.
When is GIF better than ICO?
GIF images are entirely compatible with nearly all current and older browsers, platforms, and editing software, while ICO images are not widely compatible with image editors and web browsers. This makes GIF format appropriate for displaying animated clips or short videos online.
GIF file extensions are larger and have a limited color palette compared to ICO files, but they can be interlaced and dithered and permit the simple creation of animations.
When is ICO better than GIF?
ICO images are vector-based and can be scaled up or down while maintaining their resolution levels, while GIF images become grainy with upward or downward scaling owing to their bitmapped stature. This makes the ICO file format ideal for creating visually appealing and web-efficient application icons, website favicons, and desktop shortcuts.
ICO versus GIF Table Comparison
| Element | ICO | GIF |
| Transparency | Supports transparency. | Supports transparency. |
| File Size | Smaller files compared GIF files. | Larger files compared to ICO files. |
| Image Quality | High-quality images than GIF images. | Low-quality images ICO images. |
| Performance | Smaller and loads faster than GIF files. | Larger and slower than ICO files. |
| Structure | Vector-based with an Icon directory, image mask, XOR bitmap, block, and the AND bitmap. | Raster-based with a header, screen descriptor, and color table blocks and ends with a trailer block. |
| Animation | Supports animations. | Supports animations. |
| Storage | Requiresless storage space than GIF. | Requires more storage space than ICO. |
| Compression | PNGOUT&TinyPNG lossless compression. | Supports lossless compression. |
| Browser Support | Limited browser support compared to GIF. | Wider web browsers support compared to ICO. |
Differences and similarities between GIF and ICO images
ICO is a raster graphic file type, while GIF is a raster-based format. You will realize that both formats support lossless compression and transparency when doing a GIF versus ICO analysis. However, their structure, browser support, image quality, performance, animation, file size, and storage demands differ.
Transparency
GIF and ICO image formats support transparency. However, an ICO file handles transparency by allowing users to add semi-transparent areas, including shadows, anti-aliasing, and glass-like effects to the created images. The file format supports 8 bits of transparency.
On the other hand, GIF, through its GIF89a, supports alpha channel transparency. This feature enables and organizes the palette colors to be ignored and assimilated into the transparent background. The GIF's alpha channel instantaneously processes the image to be shown on a device and its transparent backgrounds, allowing such images to have a professional look.
File Size
ICO and GIF store multiple images in a single file. However, each GIF image has a size limit between 2MB and 3MB, making it significantly larger than ICO files. Similarly, both formats store lossless files, but ICO uses an advanced compression method, resulting in significantly smaller files than GIFs.
Image Quality
GIF is a low-quality format, while ICO is a high-quality file type. The ICO file format supports a maximum bit depth of 24 bits per color channel and 8 bits of transparency. On the other hand, GIF only supports 8 bits per color channel, although both formats have limited color spaces of 256 indexed colors.
ICO files can be scaled upwards or downwards without losing resolution levels, which is impossible with GIF files. Often, GIF files become distinct when scaled, lowering their resolution levels to 72 and 90 dpi. This justifies why GIF images are deemed low-quality compared to ICO images.
Performance
The ICO and GIF file formats store multiple images in a single file. However, ICO files comprise significantly smaller images than the compiled GIF images, each with a size limit of 2-3MB. While both files support lossless compression, GIFs are larger, consume more bytes, and load slower on websites than ICOs.
Structure
A GIF extension is a raster graphic format, while ICO format is vector graphic. As such, the differences in format structure make ICO and GIF hectic to compare. GIF file extension commence with the fixed-length headers like GIF89a or GIF87a.
After the header, the GIF integrates the logical file version and screen descriptor with a fixed length, stating the added GIF features and the coherent screen scales in pixels. The logical screen scrutinizes whether the file size description and Global Color Table are present.
In contrast, an ICO file has an Icon directory (ICONDIR) with the ICONDIRENTRY structure for all images. An adjacent block with image bitmap data closely follows each image file. It has the AND bitmap (image mask and the XOR bitmap) the bitmapped data includes either Windows BMP or PNG formats, which are known to ignore the BITMAPFILEHEADER structure. ICO comprises multiple images stored in a single file with varying sizes and color depths.
Animation
GIF and ICO file extensions serve different purposes in animation and customization. GIF files support animation through the GIF89a specification, which enhances the file header and enables web browsers, platforms, and software to display various GIF images in a series or prearranged order. This allows GIFs to combine frames and images to produce simple animations.
On the other hand, ICO files do not support animation. They are primarily used for icons in computer applications and websites, offering enhanced customization by supporting different resolution levels and multiple color depths. ICO files can contain multiple images of various sizes and color depths, but these ensure icons look good across different displays.
Storage
ICO compresses and stores images from 1x1 pixels to 256x256 pixels. Conversely, GIF stores multiple images in a single file, each with a size limit of 2MB to 3MB. While both formats use lossless compression, ICO compression is more effective, resulting in smaller files with less storage space, which demands GIF files.
ICO and GIF file types store image data indefinitely, depending on the storage mediums, storage conditions, and handling procedures. However, GIF and ICO files can be stored forever in sub-directory programs, file systems, Cloud, Folders, Base64 Encoding, hard Drives, and Content Delivery Networks.
Compression
ICO supports TinyPNG or PNGOUT lossless compression techniques, while GIF uses lossless compression with the Lempel Ziv Welch (LZW) algorithms. The compression techniques preserve all image data in both cases, resulting in larger files.
Lossless LZW algorithms compress GIF images by merging local palettes, modifying the color space, spatially predicting pixels, replacing alpha channels, and merging altered pixels into one pixel. LZW exploits duplication in information streams to efficiently store meek graphical images using flat colors.
Given the resulting GIF file sizes after compression, it is apparent that GIF's compression method is inferior and less effective than ICO's. The compressed ICO file is stored as a PNG file, which is passed over to the DEFLATE, which integrates Huffman coding with the LZ77 algorithm.
The outcome of a compressed ICO is a small, high-quality PNG image or file. Thus, users should choose ICO for its compression efficiency, which ensures image quality and smaller file sizes.
Browser Support
GIF and ICO files are supported across most web browsers and social media platforms. While both formats enjoy universal browser support, GIF is supported by all new and legacy web browsers, including Brave, Internet Explorer, Samsung Internet,Discord, Opera, Edge, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Vivaldi.
Conversely, web browsers support ICO files, including Opera, Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. Old browsers like Internet Explorer, which hardly favors scaling icons, do not. Besides, Safari supports only a preview of an ICO's file format. Thus, for extensive browser support, choose GIF instead of ICO.
Converting GIF to ICO or ICO to GIF
Convert GIF to ICO using an online tool like Convertjack. The tool is ideal as it ensures that the converted ICO files are relatively smaller, high-quality, and necessitate less memory space than the primary GIF files, resulting in better online user experience.
Use convertjack, a proficient ICO to GIF converter, to enjoy easily dithered files with interlaced mechanisms, transparent backgrounds, and animated GIF files with limited color palettes used to make logos, simple cartoons, and line art.