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ImageConverter

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GIF to BMP Converter

Convert a GIF into a Windows BMP bitmap. The pixels come through exactly — and the file gets enormously larger. A 3.5 KB diagram became a 720 KB bitmap in testing, two hundred times the size, looking precisely the same. That is only worth it when some piece of software insists on BMP, which does still happen.

Deleted automatically Uploads removed within 30 minutes

Drag and drop your GIF images here

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

Up to 20 MB per file Batch ready

#ffffff

BMP cannot store transparency, so it is filled with this colour.

Step by step

How to convert GIF to BMP in 3 steps

  1. Add your GIF

  2. Pick a background colour

    Pick a background colour for any transparent areas — it becomes a permanent part of the bitmap.

  3. Download your BMP

Format comparison

GIF vs BMP

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

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

Why the file grows so much

The two formats store the same picture in completely different ways.

A GIF stores a palette and a list of indexes. It keeps up to 256 colours in a small table once, then records each pixel as a single number pointing into that table — and then compresses that list of numbers, which shrinks dramatically wherever colours repeat.

A BMP stores three raw bytes for every pixel — red, green and blue — with no compression at all. A 600 × 400 image is 720 KB whether it is a detailed photograph or a single flat colour. Size depends on the dimensions and nothing else.

So a GIF that compresses well is exactly the GIF that explodes. Measured:

  • A flat diagram: 3.5 KB → 720 KB. Two hundred times larger.
  • A photograph saved as GIF: 107 KB → 360 KB. Three and a half times larger.

The photo grows less only because it was already a poor fit for GIF — its dithering had kept the GIF from compressing much in the first place.

Nothing is gained in quality

A BMP can hold millions of colours, but only the 256 in your GIF exist to put in it. Every pixel comes across exactly, and not one is improved. The bitmap is a larger container for an identical picture.

Transparency is flattened onto your colour

GIF can mark one colour as transparent; a standard BMP holds none. Transparent areas are filled with the background colour you choose, and that colour is baked in.

That matters more for BMP than it sounds. The software that needs BMP tends to be old, and old software commonly ignores any transparency information a bitmap carries — so a background that was left "transparent" can turn up as black. Choosing an explicit colour avoids that entirely.

What happens to transparent pixels when converting GIF to BMP?

BMP cannot store transparency, so transparent and semi-transparent areas are blended onto a solid background before the file is saved — the colour you choose above, #FFFFFF by default. Keep your original GIF if you may need the transparency again.

Quality

Quality and file size

There is no quality setting. BMP is uncompressed and GIF is lossless, so nothing is discarded in either direction — the only thing that changes is how much disk space the same pixels occupy.

When BMP is genuinely the right answer

  • Legacy Windows software that reads BMP and nothing else.
  • Embedded and industrial displays, where a format with no decompression is preferred because decoding anything else is not worth implementing.
  • Old game engines and modding tools that expect bitmap textures and sprites.
  • Installer and resource tooling in older development environments.

Outside those, GIF to PNG gives you the same lossless pixels at a fraction of the size, with transparency intact, and opens everywhere a BMP does.

Animated GIFs

A BMP holds one image, so an animated GIF gives you its first frame. The tool counts the frames before converting and tells you when that has happened. For sprite work where each frame must be a separate bitmap, extract the frames first and convert them one at a time.

Watch the dimensions on large GIFs

Because size depends only on dimensions, a large GIF becomes a very large bitmap: a 2000 × 2000 GIF is about 12 MB as BMP regardless of what it shows. If the target system has a file-size limit, that is the number to check.

Pixel art and sprites

The most common modern reason for this conversion is game work. Retro and indie sprite sheets are often shared as GIFs, and some older engines, level editors and modding tools only load bitmaps.

Pixel art converts perfectly here: every pixel is exact, no smoothing is applied, and the palette survives unchanged. The one thing to decide carefully is the background colour — many engines treat a specific colour, often bright magenta, as "transparent" when loading a bitmap. If yours does, set that colour as the background and your transparent areas will be recognised.

Two formats from the 1980s

BMP arrived with Windows in 1985 and GIF two years later, and they were designed around opposite constraints. BMP made pixels trivially easy to read at a time when processing was expensive. GIF made images small enough to send over a modem at a time when bandwidth was precious.

Converting one to the other trades GIF's answer for BMP's — and today storage is cheap but still not free, which is why this is a conversion for compatibility rather than for its own sake.

Related

BMP to GIF goes the other way, and is the rare conversion to GIF that is a genuine improvement. GIF to PNG is the better choice almost any time BMP is not specifically required.

What happens to your file

Browsers cannot write BMP files, so this runs on our server. Your upload is deleted the moment conversion finishes, the result is deleted as you download it, and anything abandoned is swept automatically.

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

GIF to BMP: frequently asked questions

Why is the BMP so much bigger than my GIF?

A GIF stores a small colour table and a compressed list of pixel indexes; a BMP stores three raw bytes for every pixel with no compression. Size then depends only on dimensions. Measured, a 3.5 KB diagram became a 720 KB BMP — two hundred times larger — while a photo-GIF grew three and a half times.

Does the image look any better as BMP?

No. A BMP can hold millions of colours, but only the 256 in your GIF exist to put in it. Every pixel comes across exactly and none is improved — it is a larger container for an identical picture.

What happens to transparent areas?

They are filled with the background colour you choose, and that colour is permanent. Choose deliberately: the old software that needs BMP often ignores transparency information, so a background left "transparent" can show up as black.

My game engine uses magenta for transparency.

Then set the background colour to that exact magenta — often #ff00ff — and the transparent areas of your GIF will become the colour your engine treats as see-through when it loads the bitmap.

What about an animated GIF?

A BMP holds one image, so you get the first frame, and the tool tells you when the GIF had more. For sprite work that needs every frame as its own bitmap, extract the frames first and convert them individually.

Should I use BMP or PNG?

PNG, unless something specifically requires BMP. PNG keeps the same lossless pixels at a fraction of the size, preserves transparency, and opens everywhere a BMP does. BMP is for legacy software, embedded displays and old game tooling.

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