GIF to PNG Converter

How do I convert GIF to PNG?

Press Choose GIF pictures, or drop or paste files onto the page, and check that Convert to reads PNG. Press Convert to PNG, then Download. Each GIF is saved as a PNG of its first frame, and several GIFs arrive together as one ZIP. The conversion happens in your browser, so nothing is uploaded.

1. Press Choose GIF pictures or drop the files on the page. The list marks each GIF as first frame only.
2. Leave Convert to on PNG. Optional: scale the pictures by percent or longest side.
3. Press Convert to PNG, then Download. The result list shows each file before and after.

The page reads each file by its first bytes, so a GIF with a wrong extension is still identified. For other formats, use the Image Converter. To print or send the result as a document, PNG to PDF takes the PNG directly.

What happens to an animated GIF when I convert it to PNG?

The PNG shows the first frame only, so the animation is gone. Browsers hand over the first frame of a GIF when a page draws it, and this converter saves that frame. Our 4-frame test GIF became one 640 by 427 PNG that matched frame 1 pixel for pixel.

If you need a later frame, open the GIF in a video or image editor, export that frame as a still, and convert the still. Keeping the motion needs an animated format, such as animated WebP or video, and those are outside this page. The WebP to PNG page has the same first-frame behavior for animated WebP files.

The test animation was 10 KB as a GIF and 9.2 KB as a PNG of frame 1, so the single-frame PNG came out a little smaller than the four-frame GIF.

Does GIF to PNG keep the transparent background?

Yes. A GIF can mark one palette color as transparent, and the converter carries every clear pixel into the PNG, which has a full alpha channel. Soft edges are not created, though. GIF transparency is on or off per pixel, so the edges stay as jagged as they were in the GIF.

We measured it on a 400 x 400 logo (160,000 pixels) with a soft shadow. The source held 45,505 half see-through pixels. Saved as a GIF, that shadow collapsed to 114,571 clear and 45,429 solid pixels with 0 in between, and the PNG made from the GIF held the identical values. So the shadow does not come back in the PNG. The GIF specification allows a single transparent color index per frame, which is why GIF cannot store partial transparency. To fill transparent areas with a color instead, convert the PNG on to JPG with PNG to JPG.

Why is the PNG bigger than the GIF?

A GIF stores each pixel as a number pointing into a palette of at most 256 colors. The converter saves PNG in full color, so every pixel carries its own red, green and blue values. Our chart GIF of 17 KB became a 34 KB PNG, and the photo GIF grew from 764 KB to 911 KB.

The photo is the instructive row. As a full-color PNG, the same photo is 2.4 MB, so the GIF is the smaller of the two, but only because it threw away color detail. MDN's image guide advises preferring PNG over GIF for lossless and indexed still images, and PNG can be saved with a palette too; this page saves full color so the result is safe for any picture. The size is the price, so use the Size option to shrink pictures that must stay small.

Does GIF to PNG lose quality?

No new quality is lost, because PNG is lossless and the PNG matched the GIF frame exactly in our test. Quality the GIF already lost stays lost, since a GIF keeps only 256 colors. The photo saved as a GIF differed from the original by 3.28 levels out of 255, and the PNG carries that difference.

The flat chart is the opposite case. It needed only 57 colors, so its GIF matched the original chart to within 0 levels, and converting it loses nothing visible. A GIF of a logo, a diagram or a screenshot therefore converts cleanly, while a GIF of a photograph keeps the speckled dithering that the GIF encoder added. For the reverse direction, JPG to PNG follows the same lossless rule.