Convert GIF to PNG
Convert GIF images to PNG free, in your browser.
Change the format. Drop an image, a PDF or a Word document.
- JPG · PNG · WebP · Text · Word
- Word
- PDF · Text
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This is the sensible conversion for almost every GIF that is not an animation. GIFs on the web are usually logos, icons, buttons, diagrams and pixel art, all of which are flat colour with hard edges, and PNG is the format built for exactly that.
The immediate gain is colour. GIF is capped at 256 colours per frame, which is why old graphics have visible banding in gradients and a speckled dither where a smooth blend should be. PNG stores 16.7 million and full transparency, so anything you edit or re-save from here on has room to be correct rather than inheriting a 1987 limitation.
The transparency is the other reason. GIF has one transparent colour and no in-between, which is why an old logo has a jagged halo when it sits on a background it was not cut out for. PNG has 256 levels of it, so a redrawn edge can be genuinely smooth. Converting does not fix an existing jagged edge, but it stops you being stuck with the limit.
How to convert GIF to PNG
- Drop your GIF files onto the box above, or paste them with Ctrl+V.
- Save each file from its tile, or take them all at once.
What changes
Animation is lost
A GIF can hold many frames and a PNG holds one, so you get the first frame as a still image.
GIF and PNG side by side
| GIF | PNG | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it came from | 1987, from CompuServe | 1996, designed as a free replacement for GIF |
| Throws detail away | No, every pixel is kept | No, every pixel is kept |
| Transparency | Yes | Yes |
| Where it opens | Universal, and has been for longer than most of the web | Everywhere, without exception, since the late nineties |
| Best at | Short looping animations, and almost nothing else any more | Screenshots, logos, diagrams and anything with text or hard edges in it |
More on choosing between JPG, PNG, WebP and AVIF.
Questions about GIF to PNG
Does the animation survive?
No. You get the first frame as a still image. PNG as written here holds one picture, and a browser canvas cannot write animation back out in any case, so this is a limit of the whole approach rather than a choice about PNG. If the animation is what you care about, keep the original GIF. If you want it smaller, a video file will beat both by a wide margin.
Will the picture look any better?
It will not improve, but it stops getting worse. The 256-colour palette and the dither pattern are baked into the GIF already, and PNG copies them exactly rather than guessing at what the original looked like. What changes is the ceiling: once it is a PNG you can adjust, recolour and re-save without being forced back through a palette every time, which is where the visible damage used to accumulate.
What happens to the transparent background?
It survives, but with the limitation the GIF already had. GIF marks a single palette entry as fully transparent with nothing in between, so edges are either solid or gone, which is what produces the jagged halo on old web graphics. PNG stores that faithfully. It also has 256 levels of transparency available, so if you redraw or soften the edge afterwards, the format will hold it properly.
Will the file get bigger?
Usually a little, sometimes a lot, and it depends on the picture. A flat icon converts to a PNG of a similar size, since both compress repetition well. A photographic GIF grows substantially, because PNG now stores every pixel of a dithered image exactly and dither is close to random noise, which is the hardest thing for it to compress. For a photograph, <a href="/gif-to-jpg">GIF to JPG</a> is much the smaller file.
Other conversions
GIF also converts to JPG.