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ImageConverter

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BMP to GIF Converter

Convert a BMP into a GIF. This is the one conversion on this site where GIF is genuinely the better format: the file drops by around 80%, and for the kind of image a BMP usually holds, often with no visible change whatsoever.

Deleted automatically Uploads removed within 30 minutes

Drag and drop your BMP images here

Add several at once. Each file is processed and then deleted from our server.

Up to 20 MB per file Batch ready

Step by step

How to convert BMP to GIF in 3 steps

  1. Add your BMP

    They are large, so this may take a moment.

  2. Nothing to configure

  3. Download your GIF

Format comparison

BMP vs GIF

BMP (Windows Bitmap)

Uncompressed

An early Windows format that stores pixels more or less raw, with little or no compression.

  • Read by old and embedded software that knows nothing newer
  • No compression artefacts
  • Very large files for the image size

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)

256 colours

The long-standing format for simple animations, limited to a palette of 256 colours per frame.

  • Animation that plays almost anywhere
  • Tiny files for flat graphics with few colours
  • Only 256 colours, so photographs look grainy or banded

Why this one is an improvement

Everywhere else on this site, converting to GIF costs you something. Here it usually does not, for two reasons that happen to line up.

BMP does not compress. In practice it stores every pixel as raw bytes, so a 600 × 400 image is about 720 KB regardless of content — a blank white rectangle costs exactly as much as a detailed drawing. GIF compresses, and on flat artwork it compresses extremely well. Measured: a 720 KB BMP became a 129 KB GIF.

BMPs are usually the right content for GIF. Bitmaps come overwhelmingly from old Windows software — Paint, screen captures, scanner utilities, industrial equipment — and that content is screenshots, diagrams, line art and interface graphics. Flat colours with hard edges is exactly what GIF was designed for.

Better still, many old BMPs are already 16 or 256 colours. If yours is, the 256-colour palette costs you nothing at all — the conversion is effectively lossless, just far smaller.

When it does cost something

If your BMP is a photograph — less common, but it happens with older scanners and some cameras — then the 256-colour limit bites in the usual way. Expect banding across skies and skin, or a haze of dithering.

In that case BMP to JPG is much better: smaller again and without the palette reduction. BMP to PNG is the choice if you need it lossless.

Transparency

BMP has no usable transparency to lose, so nothing changes here. If your bitmap has a bright magenta or cyan background, that was an old convention meaning "treat this as transparent" — nothing honours it automatically, and it will come across as a solid magenta area. Remove it in an editor first if you need real transparency, and use PNG.

Quality

Quality and file size

There is no quality setting, because GIF has none. For a limited-palette source there is nothing to set anyway.

Check whether you actually want PNG

Honest comparison, since these two overlap heavily:

  • PNG keeps every colour, supports real transparency, and compresses flat artwork about as well as GIF — frequently better. For almost every purpose it is the superior choice.
  • GIF is the answer when something specifically requires GIF, or when the image is going into an animation.

The saving over BMP is roughly the same either way, so the decision is about compatibility rather than size.

Old bitmaps convert cleanly

Bottom-up row order, 4-bit and 8-bit palettes, RLE compression — all handled. A very old file that will not convert is most likely a 16-bit variant with unusual channel masks, or an OS/2 header; opening it in any modern editor and saving as PNG will normalise it.

Size limits

Because BMPs are uncompressed, a large one is genuinely large — a 4000 × 3000 bitmap is about 36 MB before anything happens to it. Each file can be up to the size shown on the upload area. For a bigger bitmap, open it in Paint, which comes with Windows, and save it as PNG first: PNG is lossless and far smaller for the flat-colour images GIF suits. Then convert it with PNG to GIF.

Where these files come from

  • Classic Windows Paint, which saved BMP by default for decades.
  • Screen capture tools of a certain vintage.
  • Scanner software from the 1990s and 2000s.
  • Industrial, medical and embedded equipment, which still writes BMP because the format takes about twenty lines of code to produce.
  • Game and application resources from older development toolchains.

The common thread is age, and that is why this conversion works so well: old bitmaps hold old graphics, and old graphics are exactly what GIF handles.

Two formats from the same era

BMP arrived with Windows in 1985; GIF followed in 1987. They solved different halves of the same problem — BMP made storing pixels simple, GIF made sending them over a modem possible.

That difference is still the whole story of this conversion. One optimises for being easy to read; the other for being small enough to transmit. Nearly forty years later, small still wins.

If you are building an animation

Converting one BMP gives one still frame. Assembling frames into an animated GIF is a different job. And if the animation is for the web rather than for a system that demands GIF, animated WebP is far smaller and not limited to 256 colours.

Privacy

What happens to your file

This tool runs on our server, so it works the same on every phone and computer. Your file is uploaded, and this is exactly what happens to it:

  • Stored outside the public web root under a random name, never under your file's name.
  • Processed, with the original upload deleted immediately — whether it succeeded or failed.
  • The result sits behind a signed link that only you receive, which stops working after 20 minutes, and the file is deleted the moment you download it.
  • Anything never collected is deleted automatically within 30 minutes.
  • The image itself is never logged or kept. If a conversion fails, we record the formats involved and the error — not the file.
  • Camera metadata, including any GPS coordinates recording where a photo was taken, is removed from the result. Only the rotation needed to show the image the right way up is kept.

Questions & answers

BMP to GIF: frequently asked questions

Why is the GIF so much smaller?

Because BMP does not compress at all — a 600 × 400 image is about 720 KB whatever it contains — while GIF compresses, and compresses flat artwork extremely well. Measured, a 720 KB BMP became a 129 KB GIF.

Will my image look worse?

Usually not. BMPs overwhelmingly hold screenshots, diagrams, line art and interface graphics — flat colours with hard edges, which is what GIF was designed for. Many old BMPs are already 16 or 256 colours, in which case the palette limit costs nothing at all and the conversion is effectively lossless.

What if my BMP is a photograph?

Then the 256-colour limit bites in the usual way: banding across skies and skin, or a haze of dithering. BMP to JPG is much better for that — smaller again and with no palette reduction. Use PNG if you need it lossless.

Should I use GIF or PNG?

PNG for almost every purpose: it keeps every colour, supports real transparency, and compresses flat artwork about as well as GIF or better. The saving over BMP is similar either way, so the decision is about compatibility rather than size. Choose GIF when something specifically requires it, or for animation frames.

My bitmap has a magenta background.

That was an old convention meaning "treat this colour as transparent". Nothing honours it automatically, so it comes across as a solid magenta area. Remove it in an image editor first, and use PNG if you need real transparency — BMP has none to carry across and GIF only has one bit of it.

My very large BMP will not convert.

Uncompressed files get big quickly — a 4000 × 3000 bitmap is around 36 MB before anything happens to it. Each file can be up to the size shown on the upload area. For a bigger bitmap, save it as PNG in Paint first, which loses nothing, and convert the PNG instead.

Keep going

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